Friday, October 30, 2015

Homemade Hibiscus Jello with Pomegranates or Berries Recipe- Paleo, Refined Sugar Free, Sugar Free Option


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I love jello and fortunately my family does as well. I've written before that the jello that I grew up with was full of sugar and artificial colorings and flavorings, etc... all things that I didn't want to be ingesting, so for the longest time we did without jello, until I learned that I could make jello using only nourishing ingredients, so that jello would go from junk to a delicious food that is actually healing for the body.
At first I made jello from apple juice concentrate, but I've stopped buying it, since I find that merely having it in the house tempts us to only want to drink that instead of water, which isn't good either for the budget or my waist.
I've been experimenting with other flavors of jello that I could make, such as ginger jello. I thought to make jello with hibiscus tea, since I had it in the house already and it is a fun color and it can be sweetened as much as you want, and with whatever sweeteners you prefer- sugar to keep it cheapest, or honey or coconut sugar to keep it more nourishing, or stevia (leaf or homemade extract) if you want it lower carb.
To make it even more fancy, I threw in the seeds of two pomegranates, though it would be terrific with fresh berries as well in place of the pomegranate seeds. You can always leave out the fruit to make plain hibiscus jello.

Homemade Hibiscus Jello with Pomegranates or Berries Recipe- Paleo, Refined Sugar Free, Sugar Free Option

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Homemade Paleo Mint Chocolate Bites Recipe- GAPS Legal, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free

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I have a thing for chocolate. I am able to eat a totally healthy diet all the time, but then the thing that tempts me, the thing that makes me break my diet is chocolate. Especially because its everywhere, in all the stores, especially at this time of year. And because white sugar in smaller amounts doesn't make me feel ill after eating it (in smaller amounts, like in dark chocolate) its where I cheat and eat not paleo, and sometimes, instead of eating just a square or two I'll scarf down a half bar or even a whole bar in one day.
Not exactly friendly to my waist.

But I would like to be able to enjoy my chocolate without having all the unhealthy ingredients in them. Especially mint chocolate.
In the past, I made chocolate with coconut oil, coconut sugar, and cocoa powder, and while it tasted good, it melted far too quickly because coconut oil has a lower melting point than chocolate, and too much coconut oil at once gave me a stomach ache, so I couldn't have too many of them at once. (Which I suppose is good...)
But either way, I wanted to make myself some homemade chocolates today, and decided to make it cashew based, since cashews would provide thickness that wouldn't melt as quickly as coconut oil would, and they have a pretty neutral flavor which I thought would work wonderfully in chocolate.
These came out terrifically and my kids and I really enjoyed them. I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I did.

These are paleo, GAPS legal, refined sugar free, dairy free, etc.... so hopefully friendly for most diets. While they're not vegan since I used honey, if you want to use a different sweetener, feel free to do that to make it vegan. If using a granulated sweetener, I suggest powdering it first with a coffee grinder.

Paleo Mint Chocolate Bites Recipe- GAPS Legal, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free

Tuesday, October 27, 2015

My Latest Frugal Shopping Trip- What I Bought and Why


Sometimes when you set yourself a really high (or in this case, low) goal, even if you don't make it exactly as you'd planned, your coming close puts you in a better place than you would have been had you not attempted to reach that difficult goal.
Two weeks ago I had a good shopping trip, and then another. So while each shopping trip was a good trip, buying things at decent prices, overall for the week they were higher than I wanted them to be, so I went the entire week last week without buying groceries (hubby picked up some milk for cereal), and I managed even without buying any new veggies and still eating only paleo and therefore veggie heavy for myself... So Sunday was the first time I was going shopping in almost 2 weeks, and though not going shopping the week before brought down our "monthly average" I still wanted to try to keep my grocery bill low, so I set a goal to only spend $85 on groceries- no big stocking up on anything since we had most of what we needed other than produce and a few other things. I said $85 would be what I was aiming for, but if I needed to spend as much as $115 that was also cool with me.

Well, I'll give a little spoiler here now. I didn't make my goal of $85 or even $115, but since those were the numbers I was aiming for, my total was $124, pretty close to my upward end up my goal. So setting that goal was a good exercise and did keep down my spending. (I almost bought 12 bars of dark chocolate on sale, but didn't because it would put me over my goal. And my waist will thank me for that!)


Friday, October 23, 2015

Stuffed Butternut Squash Recipe- Paleo, Grain Free, Sugar Free

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I haven't been grocery shopping in about a week and a half, and have no plans on going shopping until at least Sunday or Monday. I also am eating Paleo, which is very vegetable heavy and there is a limit to how much produce I can buy at once, so you can imagine our stock of produce is slowly dwindling to next to nothing.
I was trying to come up with a nice meal idea that would use the produce I had at home,  and that didn't take much work to make at all. My friend Vera suggested stuffed butternut squash, so with that idea in mind, I threw together something that I thought would taste good- I loosely based it off of my homemade breakfast sausage recipe, and while my breakfast sausage is delicious, this combination is even more delicious and the meat is even more moist.
I will be making it again, that's for sure!
While I thought these looked super fancy when I was making them, I realize that the photograph doesn't do it justice... Oh well.
These are Paleo, grain free, and just simply delicious.
You can make it with ground turkey in place of ground chicken.
If you're a vegan, my friend Raquel suggested trying this with tempeh in place of the ground chicken.
While I hasn't originally intended this as a Thanksgiving dish, it would actually be a perfect accompaniment to your Thanksgiving dinner table.

Stuffed Butternut Squash Recipe- Paleo, Grain Free, Sugar Free

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Low Carb Vegan Zucchini Cheese Sauce Recipe- Paleo, Allergy Friendly, GAPS Legal



I was trying to make my family a quick supper because I didn't want to spend too much time in the kitchen- I finally had a mother's helper come again after not coming the entire summer, etc... and I wanted to get the place cleaned up instead of dirtying up the kitchen. So I cooked up some gluten free pasta, dumped in a can of tuna and a container of cottage cheese, a bit of dehydrated onion flakes, threw in some frozen peas... and started salivating. I love combinations of pasta, cheese, and tuna, and that dish tempted me so much that I nearly ate some, despite knowing that it would make me feel icky.
Instead, I decided to make my own vegan cheese sauce, based on a recipe that I'd seen a few times for zucchini "cheese", since I had zucchini in my house already. I then mixed the sauce with some green beans, spiralized sweet potatoes, tuna, and onion flakes, and the result really hit the spot- and doesn't hurt my body. (And no, it wasn't the quickest meal to make, and did add a bit to the kitchen mess, but fortunately it wasn't too bad.)
I plan on making this cheese sauce again since it was pretty quick to make, and it is low carb. I do often thicken sauces with tapioca starch but since the local stores were out last time I went, it was nice to be able to have a thicker sauce that is vegetable heavy and nutritious, especially since it isn't carby. This recipe is also paleo, GAPS legal, allergy friendly, etc...
As with all vegan cheeses, you can't expect it to taste exactly like regular cheese, because it simply isn't. But this combination works to give you the cheesiness that you were craving, and does a decent job replacing it in most recipes (like chicken or eggplant "Parmesan" for example).

Low Carb Vegan Zucchini Cheese Sauce Recipe- Paleo, Allergy Friendly, GAPS Legal

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Sekanjabin Recipe- Refreshing Persian Minty Drink- Refined Sugar Free Options

 photo IMG_0120_zpsayoz6lek.jpgI'm not exactly sure the first time I heard about the Persian drink called sekanjabin, but it intrigued me. I like making and enjoying foods from around the world, but I'll admit, Persian food is something I'm not very familiar with, and the recipes that I'd tried didn't appeal to me so much.
However, sekanjabin just sounded really interesting. It's kind of a minty lemonade, though in place of lemon you use vinegar.
Traditionally it is made with honey- which works perfectly for people who want to avoid refined sugar, though if you want to keep it cheaper you can use white sugar to taste instead, and if you want to make it vegan and still refined sugar free, I've made it successfully with coconut sugar (though you'll need more to make it sweet enough).
This recipe usually calls for fresh mint, but alas, I have none growing nearby me fresh, and buying fresh herbs from the grocery store gets expensive, so I just make this the cheater way- with mint extract. Note about that- the first few times I made it, it was with a mint extract that was oil based, which actually made the sekanjabin somewhat unappealing to drink because you saw little droplets of oil floating on the top. So if you want to make this with extract, use something alcohol based, not oil based. K?
Of course, if you do want to use fresh mint, you can, but then it's a more complicated process and involves boiling it up together, etc... so I suggest using extract.

My family and I like our sekanjabin strong and tart and not too sweet, so feel free to adjust this to taste, adding more or less water, more or less sweetener, more or less vinegar, or more or less mint extract. Hey- by the time you finish fiddling with this recipe and make it to taste, I might as well not have given you any exact recipe, but haha, oh well.

If you want to know how popular this is with my family- my kids saw me making it to snap this picture just as they were heading to bed, and it was a big battle to get them to actually go to sleep and not have this first- the only way I was able to get them to agree to sleep without the sekanjabin was to promise that it would be waiting for them first thing in the morning. Yup, it's that popular.

Sekanjabin Recipe- Refreshing Persian Minty Drink- Refined Sugar Free Options

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Paleo Chicken Pot Pie Recipe- Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Grain Free

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When I went shopping last, I bought a bunch of chicken necks, and as I was looking at the packages, I was wondering to myself what kind of delicious dishes I could make with it, and started thinking which recipes work well with deboned chicken. Chicken pot pie came to mind immediately, and then the more I thought about it, the more I craved it, so I decided to mix up a batch, despite it being more work than the average dish I've been cooking lately.
I made my recipe Paleo and dairy free, but feel free to play around with this recipe. If you're vegan, feel free to sub in chickpeas in place of the meat. If you aren't gluten free, feel free to use any pie crust recipe that you like. If you aren't dairy free, feel free to use whatever milk you want, whether dairy or almond milk, soy milk, etc...  If you don't eat peas (and some might say that peas aren't Paleo, but they don't bother me and according to this some say they're fine in moderate amounts on a Paleo diet) feel free to replace it with another vegetable in this recipe, like zucchini or green beans or potatoes, etc...
It was terrific! Really hit the spot, and my kids all enjoyed it. They asked me to please make it again! I plan on it, since it was a good cheap and tasty meal. Maybe next time I'll just make the filling, no crust, and then it'll be even easier!


Paleo Chicken Pot Pie Recipe- Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Grain Free

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Finding My New Normal- Taking Shortcuts and Not Feeling Guilty

Anyone who's been a long time reader of my blog, and has been keeping up with it recently has probably noticed a change. Less frequent posting, a lot of talk about not having the energy to deal with xyz, a lot of short cuts that I'm trying to do
I sometimes wonder what type of lifestyle takes more out of you, being a full time working mom with kids in daycare from a young age, or spending all day taking care of your four kids. Because to be quite frank, I'm wiped out. Exhausted. Mentally mostly, but physically as well. I honestly felt I had my hands somewhat full but manageable with 3 kids and then I was pregnant with my youngest, Rose, and I don't function very well when pregnant. I was hoping that after I gave birth and recovered postpartum, I'd be back to my previous lifestyle, pretty productive and creative, etc... And at first, the first few months of Rose's life, it seemed like that would happen, that I'd go back to normal.
But then I got to know Rose, and began to realize that my life will never be fully normal again.

I love her to pieces, but Rose is the definition of handful. We joke that Trouble is not her middle name... it's her first name. Super smart, very advanced developmentally, and using that genius to get up to all sorts of trouble. She seems to thrive on destruction and has limitless energy. I think I spend more energy looking after her and keeping up with her and fixing up after her and keeping her out of trouble than I did with my previous three kids combined. I kept on thinking "when she gets older, she'll be easier" but so far, as her skills have improved, she's used them to ramp up the level of destruction she gets up to. As I try to fix up one bit of trouble she caused, clean up one portion of the mess, and my back is turned, she is destroying another part of the house.

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Rose climbing up my kitchen draws, hanging upside down in public transportation, and doing pull ups on our pull up car. To give you an idea of what parenting her is like. I left out pictures of destruction she causes... because, you know, its the internet. And people on the internet can be nasty about things like that.
It gets exhausting. Mentally mostly, but physically as well, since my kids don't really sleep much at night so I end up getting very little sleep.
So I don't really have the mental or emotional energy to be doing more than absolutely necessary most of the time. Being creative in the kitchen, keeping up with housework, doing ultra frugal things? Honestly, it feels like much of that is simply beyond me at this point in time. At least if I want to keep my sanity.

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

My Latest Shopping Trips- What I Bought and Why

Yesterday I had to go to town, and while I was there, decided to go to a cheap grocery store, the same one where I bought my chicken necks before. This store, actually, is the same store I wrote about before, disparagingly, because of their claiming to be free of gimmicks and tricks, but are actually really full of sly tricks to get you to spend more. That said, it still does have many items being sold at great prices, so as long as you shop carefully you can get your money' worth there, and it is worth the trip there. As long as you're careful.
I noticed that meat prices there, for the most part, are far from what I'd like to be paying, however, they do have chicken necks, which are now one of my new favorite meats, now that I've actually seen how dirt cheap they area and how many different ways they can be cooked, so I headed there with the intention to buy necks, plus a few other things that we needed.

Just an aside- I got comments on my last shopping trip roundup post, about how I "spend a lot of money on nuts for myself, but make my kids eat necks", which, while I addressed in a comment, thought merited a response in a post itself.
When it comes to frugality, I try to save money where I can so that I can have more wiggle room and cash to spend on the things that are important to me. Regarding food, this means making do with cheaper animal proteins (chicken necks, gizzards, wings, etc...) instead of more expensive ones, so that I can have more grocery money available to spend on healthier sweeteners, healthier oils, nuts, etc... It may not be the type of thing everyone would do- maybe some people would rather serve more expensive cuts of meat and cheaper oils/sweeteners, and would skip the nuts, but that's cool- everyone is free to do with their money what they want, but this is the choice we've made for our family.
And as for things for me vs things for my kids, for the most part my family and I eat the same food, other than when they're eating things that I can't, or that I avoid for health reasons. There are the very rare times that I actually buy treats only for myself (like super rare)- most treats that I buy go for the kids. I don't believe that as a parent I should get the good things and my kids not- my kids get what they like and that we can afford, and I get what I like that we can afford. No one feels lacking.
Regarding the specifics- my kids aren't the hugest fans of necks because they don't like the bones, but most meat that I make, whether thighs or drumsticks or wings, my kids ask me to remove the meat from the bones, so I just do the same for them with the necks, and then they'll happily eat it. But for the most part, I am the one eating the necks (together with veggies), while they are eating dairy including cereal and milk, cheese, hot dogs, etc... And nuts end up being mainly for the sweets that I make for the family, usually once a week, so its not lots of money on me vs a little on the kid. We're a family and I buy what each person will like and eat and can tolerate, everyone getting nice things as much as we can allow, no one being forced to eat foods they dislike.

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Monday, October 12, 2015

When Less is More- Getting Rid of Things and Saving Money


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I have said it before and I'll say it again- neatness, being organized, etc... is one of my hardest things. Its probably one of my bigger character flaws, and it sometimes hurts me a lot in the frugal department.

Lately I've been feeling like I had no clothing. And that my kids had no clothing to wear.
I knew intellectually that we probably did have what to wear, but the problem was that our clothing shelves were so stuffed and disorganized and messy that we couldn't actually find the clothes that we did have.

To be honest, my problem was in part that I had too much clothing, most of which I wasn't wearing since it didn't look good on my body shape or the color wasn't flattering, and I have decided that unless it is super comfortable or I have another reason to wear it, not to wear any clothing that I didn't feel good about myself or my body when I wore it. Because there was so much and there was barely any room to store it, lets just say my shelves were a disaster zone, and I could never find anything I wanted to wear. And the boys had so many clothes on their shelves that they'd outgrown that it made it hard to find the things that actually fit.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Middle Eastern Style Braised Chicken Necks Recipe- Super Frugal, Paleo, Easy

 photo necks_zpsnyhsdqwr.jpgIn my last post, about my recent grocery shopping trip, I'd mentioned that I was looking to buy meat, and saw that the cheapest meat to buy was chicken necks at 50 cents a pound, and the next cheapest meat was chicken wings at $1.94 per pound, so I stocked up on a bunch of chicken necks, which I plan on using as our protein for quite a few meals, especially since it is so cheap.

However, when I posted about that, I got some interesting reactions. Among them was someone insisting that it doesn't matter how cheap chicken necks are, they aren't actually cheap if you consider how much meat is on them, which this person was insisting was barely anything, that they're mostly bone.
Now don't get me wrong, I know there is a lot of bones in chicken necks. But I also know that there is a lot of bones in every single type of poultry out there, other than breast meat or organ meat, and that people have these misconceptions about what is "all bones" and what is not. Like people think that chicken wings are "all bones" but thighs and drumsticks are not, etc... but I put that to the test already 5 years ago, when I did my breakdown and calculated the true price of meat per pound once you factored in the bones. And I discovered, shockingly, that chicken wings were 49% meat, drumsticks 51% meat, and thighs 53%, really negligible differences.
But that isn't what this post is about.
It's about chicken necks.
Which are 37.5% meat. 11.5% less than wings, which is a difference, yes, but not significantly so. Especially if you consider the fact that some people don't eat chicken skin (I do, and even have some great chicken skin recipes), in which case they're 35.5% meat, which is less meat than chicken necks.

But lets assume that you do eat the skin. Because we do.
Let's compare how much I'd be paying per pound of meat for wings vs necks.

According to my calculations, to figure out the true price of wings, you multiply the price per pound by 2.03 to get the price per pound of meat. Based on the prices I saw in the store, the $1.94 per pound wings are really $3.94 per pound.
And to figure out the true price of necks, you multiply the price per pound by 2.66 to get the price per pound of meat. In which case, it would be $1.33, which means that even discounting the bones, you're paying 2.96 times the price for wings vs necks.

Ok, but sometimes I find wings cheaper. The average decent price I find for wings are $1.28 per pound, which means that their true price is $2.61, still much higher than the price of necks.
When I find wings on tremendous sale, sometimes I can find them for $1.03 and I think once I saw them for $0.77 per pound. Respectively, for the meat those are $2.09 and $1.57 per pound of meat.
So, even at the rock bottom prices for wings, they still are more expensive than chicken neck meat.

The cheapest "straight meat" I can get, with no bones, is chicken gizzards, at $1.29 per pound. When I can actually find them. Once cooked though, they lose a lot of their weight, and to find out their true price per pound you have to multiply that by 1.49, which works out to be $1.93 per pound of cooked meat.

In short, chicken necks at the price I bought them are the absolutely cheapest type of meat per pound, by a long shot.
Well worth it.
I gotta go back to the store and stock up- the 20 lbs of chicken necks I got aren't enough, now that I realized just how dirt cheap they are, via writing up this post!

Ok, so, on to the recipe!
Or rather, almost.

I was trying to figure out what to do with the chicken necks. It is just starting to be a bit cooler here now, so just the start of soup weather, but I live diversifying my meals, and didn't only want to serve chicken neck soup meal after meal after meal, since soup is the standard thing to do with chicken necks.
Then, of course there's stews, and I made some really delicious chicken neck and watermelon rind stew this past summer which was the bomb!
However, sometimes you just want something that doesn't require a bowl to eat it. I wanted to know if it was possible to make some chicken necks that could be eaten on a plate together with the rest of your meal, and googling helped me come across a recipe for braised chicken necks, Indian style, but the problem was that the recipe that kept on coming up was in video format, without an ingredient list written out, and from what I could piece together, the recipe called for jeera seeds and dhania seeds, which I had no idea what they were, so I couldn't do that recipe. (Well, then I found out that jeera is cumin, and dhania is coriander, so mystery solved.)
So I decided to use a similar cooking method, braising, but making my own spice mix for it. I tried figuring out whether this spice mix is better labeled as curried or simply Middle Eastern style, but decided that the flavor reminded me most of Middle Eastern cooking (it tastes similar to baharat, but not exactly).

It truly came out delicious.

I made 3.25 lbs worth of chicken necks- feel free to use less if you don't want to make a large amount, and then just reduce the spices accordingly.

Middle Eastern Style Braised Chicken Necks Recipe- Super Frugal, Paleo, Easy

How to Eat Healthy on a Budget

You know me- I'm all about eating healthy, on a minimal budget. So this guest post by Mark was totally up my alley!

If you’ve ever tried to eat healthily, you may have noticed how expensive it can get. If you plan and strategize, though, you can absolutely maintain a high-quality, nutritious diet and also stick with your budget. Here are five strategies you can use to save some money while also eating well.

One tried-and-true way to save money on all groceries is to buy packaged items in bulk. This strategy is something people often think of in terms of snacks and things like that, but it absolutely works for healthful food items as well. Packaged foods like pasta, quinoa and protein bars can be bought in bulk for great discounts. You can use this strategy at normal grocery stores, but to save even more, you may want to consider shopping at warehouse stores like Sam’s Club or Costco. To make sure you’re saving money, compare the cost per ounce of the larger package to the cost per ounce of the smaller package. It’s often possible to get a significantly lower cost per ounce when you’re buying larger packages.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

My Latest Grocery Shopping Trip

I know I'm not the only one who sometimes notices what is in other people's shopping carts. Today, if anyone would have looked into my shopping cart, they would have probably been very confused, because my shop was far from a typical grocery shop. I haven't shared one of my grocery shopping trips with you in a while, but decided why not today?

Today my husband had off work, and I had some errands I needed to run in town, and while I was there, decided to go grocery shopping, sans all the kids. Just me and my lonesome. The last time I did that was too long ago to even remember, so it was really enjoyable for me!

The reason for my shop being "weird" was because I make and sell gluten free bread mixes, and I had so many orders that people wanted me to fill already, but I couldn't fill them without having all the necessarily ingredients.
Only the ingredients are heavy, and I wanted to be able to deliver the bread mixes when I do my regular shopping trip, so I decided that I needed to do two separate trips- one in a few days to get my usual things from the market, and another today to get the base ingredients for my bread mixes, as well as the big and the heavy things that I can't carry home easily when my stroller is already loaded with my usual groceries, in addition to the things I wanted to buy from places that are that are harder to get to if I am shopping with 4 kids.
And so, my shopping trip today was weird, but nearly everything I bought was premeditated and purchased to be as frugal as possible.

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Thursday, October 1, 2015

No Bake Paleo Cheesecake Bars Recipe- Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Grain Free



For as much as I have a million recipes on my site, sometimes I really am not inspired in the kitchen, but when people post links to yummy things on Facebook, then I get my creative juices flowing, adapting those recipes to suit my needs.
Someone recently posted this recipe on Facebook and oh boy did I start salivating from the picture alone. Then I saw that it had ghee in it, something that, unfortunately, I am not able to handle, despite the fact that officially it should be tolerated even by people like myself who are sensitive to dairy. And I know from experience that caramel sauces cannot simply be made subbing coconut oil for the ghee or butter, since they have different melting points.
So that wasn't happening.
And the crust was made with coconut, which I can't really handle either (coconut oil and milk I'm fine with, just not actual coconut)...
So I wanted to make it, but the recipe as it was written simply wouldn't work for me.
But I played around with it, and came up with this terrific alternative, one that I could eat without it causing me any stomach trouble.
And it came out amazing!
I hope you like it just as much as my family did!

And if you want to use a different type of crust, or a different recipe for caramel sauce, feel free to do that, but I've linked to the recipes I recommend using.



No Bake Paleo Cheesecake Bars Recipe- Dairy Free, Egg Free, Gluten Free, Grain Free

No Bake Pie Crust Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Low Carb

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I love cheesecake. I love all sorts of pies. However, they all need pie crusts... And pie crust, seriously, is my enemy. Most of the time.

But this recipe for no bake pie crust? It's something I am really excited about, especially since I haven't seen a recipe like it before; it is something I made up entirely on my own.
You see, this is a paleo/grain free and vegan pie crust, and lower carb as well. Most paleo vegan pie crusts are nut based (as this is), but they usually use dates to bind them, and I didn't think I had any dates when I was making my crust, so I was trying to figure out something that would bind them together.
I recently have become a fan of roasted (and peeled) chestnuts- they sell them in little packages of 100 grams (3.5 ounces) for $1.25 in my local grocery store, and they're quick and easy and I like to have them on hand for a tasty no prep carb. So when I was trying to come up with something to bind my nuts in my crust, I decided to give the roasted chestnuts a try, since they seemed to me that they'd have the right property to replace dates in this recipe.

Wowza! It certainly did the trick! The crust held together beautifully and wasn't nearly as carby as dates would have been. For the entire pie crust its only 53 grams of carbs, so if you make 12 slices of pie with this crust, it's only 4.4 grams of carb per bit of crust... but if you use divide it into 20 (that's how many pieces I divided mine into) its only 2.6 grams of carb per serving of crust, so I think this would qualify this crust as lower carb.

While I used this pie crust for my paleo cheesecake, feel free to use this for anything you like, whether for a chocolate ganache tart, peanut butter pie, cheesecake, or whatever else floats your boat!

This crust is vegan, allergy friendly (unless you're nut allergic), Paleo, gluten free, etc...

To keep the costs down, I used almonds that I bought from the market in bulk bins (cheaper that way) from the cheapest store I found in the market, and they were even cheaper since they were broken almonds, so $4.90 a pound instead of the usual $9 per pound or more.

No Bake Pie Crust Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, Grain Free, Gluten Free, Low Carb