I love coming across new, simple recipes that I can make quickly and easily that are also paleo friendly. Not long ago, my boyfriend Aaron whipped up some jumbo sea scallops, and I knew I had to master this recipe ASAP. They were delicious. I decided to pair the scallops with a simple salad and homemade walnut-raspberry vinaigrette dressing.

I bought a bag of frozen jumbo sea scallops from Trader Joes. In preparation for this meal, I thawed the scallops (still in bag) in room temperature water for about 30 minutes prior to cooking.

Ingredients (Scallops):

4 scallops
oil of your choice (we used grapeseed, but typically I would use olive oil as grapeseed is not preferred for paleo eaters)
1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Combine lemon, 1-2 tbsp oil and salt and pepper (to taste) in a bowl. Set scallops in mixture. Heat a pan with a light coating of oil. Add scallops to hot pan (medium-high heat). Cook each side of scallops for 2 minutes (do not flip more than once), and you’re done!

Ingredients for the salad:

mixed greens
baby heirloom tomatoes (a wonderfully Autumn-esq ingredient!)
mushrooms
leftover crushed walnuts

Ingredients for dressing:

6 tbsp walnut oil
3 tbsp raspberry vinegar
1/4 cup crushed walnuts
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine the dressing with a 2:1 ratio for the walnut oil: raspberry vinegar. Add salt, pepper, and crushed walnuts. Shake and pour over your combined salad ingredients. You will have some left over (consider this a bonus!)

Voila! A simple, healthy and delicious meal! What’s your go-to easy salad idea?

Last weekend, we suddenly realized that in all our years in Southern California, we’ve never made our own fish tacos. We’ve driven all over town, and sometimes out of town, to taste the offerings of every taco stand and beach side happy hour we can find. But somehow, it only just occurred to us that we can probably make these ourselves!

It turns out that, like most dishes, the key is to keep it fresh and simple. We opted to pan-fry our fish in oil and garlic after a brief soak in some lime juice.

We served ours with a layer of finely chopped red cabbage and scallions for a crisp bite.

You could stop right there and serve with sour cream, fresh pico de gallo, or just a quick squeeze of lime juice, but this came together so easily that we decided to make our own remoulade sauce as a topping!

Taco Ingredients:
1 lb white flaky fish
4 scallions
2 cloves garlic
3 tbsp grapeseed oil
juice 2 limes
salt and pepper
1 cup shredded red cabbage
corn tortillas

Remoulade Ingredients:
½ cup mayo
¼ cup sour cream
1 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp lime juice
1 tbsp chopped parsley
¼ tsp coriander
salt and pepper

Find the full recipe here!

We love The Hunger Games at Garlic, My Soul, and we also love Fanboy Comics. And, as you know from our Katniss’ Lamb Stew, we also love The Katniss Chronicles, which was why we were thrilled to create another recipe for the series!

This Savory Apple Tart is straight from The Hunger Games. Peeta mentions it to Katniss, in a scene when you realize that even the baker’s family didn’t have an easy life. We made it into more of a galette, which seems to fit with the country lifestyle of District 12, rather than a dainty tart.

Active Time: 45 minutes
Nonactive Time: 2 hours
Oven temperature: 375, then 350

Pastry Dough

1 3/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into 1/2 -inch pieces and chilled

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Add the butter and use a pastry blender or fork to incorporate until butter is pea sized. Add 5 tablespoons of ice water and pulse until the dough just comes together (if still too dry, add additional water, a teaspoon at a time). Turn the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and form into a flattened round about 6 inches in diameter. Wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. While the dough is chilling, make the filling.

Filling

3 medium apples
1 red onion, sliced and caramelized
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1/4 cup sugar
8 ounces goat cheese
2-4 tbsp honey
Pinch of salt
1 recipe pastry dough (see above)

1. Core your apples and halve them lengthwise, then slice each half lengthwise into one-half-inch slices. You should have about 4 cups of sliced apples.

2. Caramelize your onions: pour olive oil in your skillet, then add your sliced onion. Lower heat and let caramelize over medium-low heat about 30 minutes. Once caramelized, set aside in a separate bowl.

3. Melt the butter in same skillet you were just using over medium heat. After it melts, continue to cook, stirring occasionally until it turns light golden brown, about 4-6 minutes. Add sugar and the apples and sauté until the apples are slightly softened but still firm, about 2 to 4 minutes. Add in your caramelized onions, stir well, and turn off heat, allowing to cool slightly.

3. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow to rest for 10 minutes at room temperature. Place a large piece of parchment or wax paper on a work surface and place the dough round on top. Top the dough with a second large sheet of paper and roll out into a 12-inch circle. Remove top layer of paper.

4. Assemble your galette: crumble half of your goat cheese over the center of your dough.Loosely arrange the apples and onions on top. Crumble the remaining goat cheese and sprinkle this over the apples and onions; then sprinkle over with the salt. Fold the edges of the dough back over the filling. Drizzle the top with your honey. Place the entire tart in the freezer for 45 minutes. When your tart has been chilling for 30 minutes, turn the oven on.

5. After 45 minutes, remove the chilled tart from the freezer and place it in the oven on the lowest rack. Bake the tart for 40 minutes, checking after 30 minutes to make sure the top is not overly browned (if so, loosely cover it with a sheet of aluminum foil). Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and rotate the tart pan. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, until the crust is uniformly golden brown and the filling is caramelized on top.

6. Remove the tart from the oven and allow to cool on a rack. Allow the tart to cool slightly, at least 30 minutes, before serving warm.

We hope you make this and our Katniss’ Lamb Stew to get the full The Katniss Chronicles experience. Tell us – what do you think sounded like the most delicious Capitol recipe?

Check our recipe out over on The Katniss Chronicles site, or on Fanboy Comics!

On Thursday of last week, it was 84 degrees Fahrenheit. So hot! On Friday, it was 62 degrees. It’s only down temperature from here. Summer is officially over in London, and fall is on its way. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back at Starbucks, except not in the UK because apparently finding anything pumpkin is impossible here? More on that later…

Since it is officially fall, I decided to make one of my favorite cold weather drinks in celebration. Hot chocolate! Now this is not just any hot chocolate. I have a special recipe base that uses almond milk, and the additional flavor possibilities are endless. The two I made to kick off the beginning of autumn are Peppermint Hot Chocolate and Maple and Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate. I’ve got my eye on a Pumpkin Hot Chocolate as well, but canned pumpkin is next to impossible to find here in London. I did manage to find an actual pumpkin, but if anyone feels like putting together a care package, send pumpkin everything my way!

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 5 minutes
Servings: 2 cups of hot chocolate, but feel free to multiply!

Almond Milk Hot Chocolate – my base recipe adapted from Martha Stewart
Ingredients:
½ liter or 2 cups of unsweetened almond milk
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons sugar
A few drops of almond extract
2 ounces of a 70% dark chocolate bar

Directions:
In a medium pan, add the almond milk, cinnamon, cocoa, sugar, and almond extract. Mix until combined and heat until steaming, but not boiling. Add the dark chocolate, broken into small pieces. Stir until melted. You can drink this delicious drink, or use it as the base for these next two hot chocolate recipes.

Peppermint Hot Chocolate
Ingredients:
All of the above for Almond Milk Hot Chocolate
Peppermint extract
Candy Canes

Directions:
Begin with the basic Almond Milk Hot Chocolate above. Once steaming, add a few drops of peppermint extract and serve with a candy cane! It was a bit too early in the season for me to find candy canes, so I had to use extra peppermint extract to make it nice and minty.

Maple and Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate – adapted from this recipe
Ingredients:
All of the above for Almond Milk Hot Chocolate
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon smooth peanut butter

Directions:
Begin with the basic Almond Milk Hot Chocolate above. Once steaming, add the tablespoon of maple syrup and peanut butter. Keep stirring until everything is fully melted. Serve with a cinnamon stick.

Hopefully I will be back soon to write about the Pumpkin Hot Chocolate recipe once I have tracked down some canned pumpkin!

What flavor would you add to your hot chocolate?

I don’t know about where you are, but in Los Angeles, it is HOT HOT HOT. Because the heat has been so bad, I have been ignoring all my house duties (read: not cooking, or cleaning, or organizing…) and instead trying not to move my body more than I have to during daylight hours (our four mile on Sunday the exception to the rule.)

So, despite big plans for Labor Day Weekend, all I could muster was a trip to the food processor and freezer to make these popsicles. But they took five minutes to make, and they only made a few dishes, and I just used things I already had on hand. Now, when I get home for the next week I’ll have a tasty snack ready for me to ease myself into the non-AC homelife.

A note on plumcots, here, by the way, that I had to read before I decided to use plumcot instead of pluot or stonefruit. Plumcot is somehow just more fun to say, don’t you agree? And, that’s what the fruit was labeled in the store said, so alas, that’s what I had. My recipe is inspired by this Peaches and Cream Popsicles recipe I found, but slightly modified for the fruit and because I don’t like chunks in my popsicles nor do I like vanilla yogurt.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup of plumcots (any stone fruit); chopped then pureed
6 tablespoons milk
5 ounces container of Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons agave nectar (or to taste)

Directions:

1. Chop your plumcot or stone fruit, then puree in a blender or food processor.
2. Add your milk, yogurt, and agave (to taste, mine aren’t that sweet.)
3. Pour into your popsicle mold, and let freeze for 4-6 hours, or overnight. (BTW, we just got a new supercool mold, here.)

That’s it – five minutes, and you’re on your way to delicious, slightly sweet, creamy popsicles that’ll make the after work hours seem a little less caliente. My recipe made seven of the popsicles in the mold above, so look at the amounts to see what you need for your mold!

If you’re in LA, I hope you’re keeping cool, and if you’re in the mood for a popsicle, swing by and you can have a popsicle, or two.