When you eat a paleo diet, as we do, it can sometimes be challenging to eat enough fat. A low-carbohydrate must also be a high-fat diet, and it's tough to be a fat-eater in a low-fat world.
If our routine weren't somewhat dictated by my husband's work schedule, we would eat a big fat breakfast and a big fat early dinner and that's it. When I eat a big fat breakfast, I'm not ever hungry by lunch time, but around 3 or 4pm I'm ready to eat again. Ideally, I'd just go ahead and eat another big meal, but John doesn't get home from work until around 6:30, so I need to hold out until then. Those two or three hours are dangerously snacky.
I don't want to cook anything because I'm about to have to cook dinner. I don't want to eat anything carb-y and virtually all convenient foods are. Fruit and nuts just make me hungrier, and beef jerky is too expensive to buy often and too much of a pain in the ass to make often myself. Most lunch meat is suspect, but even the good stuff doesn't do a whole lot for me.
What I need is fat. Fat is good. Fat makes me full, fat doesn't make me bloated or shaky and doesn't make me crash an hour later. As much as I'd love to eat coconut oil off a spoon the way my son does, I just can't do it. As much as I love fat, I can't just eat it straight.
So, I came up with the perfect summertime solution: Fat Pops!
At first I was doing this exact recipe in smoothie form, and I know this will make me sound lazy, but cleaning the blender everyday is kind of a pain in the ass. I need something ready for me. So I just made a bigger smoothie and poured it into popsicle molds and poof! Fat pops.
I don't measure things (like...ever), but here is how to make your own:
1 can coconut milk (Native Forest is BPA free, or make your own)
1/2 large, or 1 small avocado
1/2 banana
Handful of blueberries
Several tablespoons of coconut oil (I usually do 5 or 6 probably)
1-2 tsp cinnamon
Blend it all up, pour it into molds, freeze. This makes 6 pops in my molds. Forget about emergency protein, now you have emergency fat!
Nutrition breakdown - one popsicles is 304 calories, has 9g carbohydrates, and 30g fat. Much better than a handful of dried fruit!
This is obviously variable - use greek yogurt if you can do dairy, use different berries or fruit, add egg yolks, leave out the banana, use coconut cream, add almond butter or coconut butter, add cocoa powder - go crazy. I bet you could use butter or ghee instead of coconut oil. A word of caution, though - if you don't do the blueberries, use something else that will add color, because the avocado/banana combo comes out sort of gray and unappetizing.
If you are used to sugary popsicles, these won't taste very sweet. For me, the fruit and coconut milk and cinnamon lend plenty of sweetness. The banana flavor comes through the most, so if you don't like banana, use more avocado or more oil/butter/ghee to get a creamy consistency.
These come with Felix's firm stamp of approval.
Let me know if you try these and do any other variations!
looks like yum!
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