Paleo Shrimp Veggie "Noodles" with Asian Style Sauce

Big News!

The writing team is doubling! My delightful sister, Naomi, will be joining us from now on. She and her husband are doing the Paleo Diet (which she’ll explain in her post), so she’ll be adding some exciting, healthy meals and snacks for the rest of us to try! I hope you enjoy her as much as I do!

-Amy

Greetings Chop, Mix, Bake, Creat-ers!

I am honored to be joining you, though really I have been here all along as the annoying reader who has to comment on every single post. I am just a proud big sister :)

Before I share this very un-Amy dish, I must introduce some important terms. The first is the "food hangover". A food hangover is what happens when you eat way too much before you go to bed. The late night munchies hit, you indulge the craving, you sleep, you wake up feeling horrendous. The feeling the next morning is a combination of full, hungry and upset stomach accompanied by a slight headache and remorse. You grill your spouse as to why they didn't stop you, vow to never eat before bed again and make them vow to fight you to the death if you try. This happens about once a fortnight (haha love that word!) in our family with varying degrees of severity. Oh except Dad who never ever gets them because he has great self control and my husband who.... um.... does everything with gusto! It's a great quality at work, at the gym, around the house...but dangerous in regard to late night snacks. He gets them at least once a week. 

This dish is brought to you by the food hangover. This particular food hangover resulted from almonds (my attempt at a healthy snack) followed by Twizzlers and who knows how much LIFE cereal straight out of the box while watching the Cosby show at my parents Friday night (this Friday night gathering is known as "Clumping" which you may learn more in the future). Mom keeps Twizzlers on hand just for me, thanks mom.

So I woke up Saturday morning with a lump in my stomache, a headache and massive guilt, grilled my husband, vowed to never eat before bed again and made him vow to fight me to the death....

Enter the Paleo diet (term introduction #2). I had played around with the Paleo diet before but never gone all out. The Paleo diet is based on what ancient man ate, hunger-gatherer foods, aka the "caveman diet". They don't eat any grains, dairy or legumes which I don't personally think are evil but it certainly limits the options to healthy ones (mainly meat, fruits, vegetables and nuts). I am not an expert and may not have gotten everything right so google it if you want more info. The food hangover was the perfect opportunity to turn over a new leaf and give this diet a try (by "diet" I mean "way of eating" not "restrictive, temporary change in eating habits for the purpose of losing weight that you are going to regain as soon as you go off the diet").

The first dinner I made while on the Paleo diet is this: Paleo Shrimp Veggie "Noodles" with Peanut Sauce. PS. peanuts are not really paleo because they are legumes so the hard core paleo folks would use some other nut butter (cashew or sesame tahini would work well). I had always wanted to try some kind of vegetable "noodle" dish where you cut the veggies up into long thin strips and cover them in a delicious sauce which is perfect when you're not eating grains.
Sorry no pictures of the process and a less than stellar picture of the final product because this is my first ever food blog post. I'm setting myself up to win "most improved"!

• Cut up your red peppers into long thin strips
• Cut your cucumber in half lengthwise and scoop out of the seeds, then cut into long thin strips
• Peel carrots and use a thick peeler to make ribbons
• Cook your shrimp (my shrimp were the cooked frozen kind since that was all I had, but I later used the Zippy Summer Shrimp recipe from allrecipes.com and highly recommend going that way) Chicken would also work if you're not a shrimp person. 
• In a saucepan combine nut butter, sesame oil, honey, soy sauce, and a little rice wine vinegar (I don't measure because it takes half the fun away but I promise I  will make a serious effort to measure for future recipes because I know some people need measurements.)
• Wisk until the nut butter has melted and all ingredients are well mixed.
• Pour sauce over "noodles" and shrimp, top with sesame seeds and decide the Paleo diet isn't half bad.

Note I also made rice for the man of the house who was/is following a slightly less restrictive "whole foods diet". I don't know if there is an official name for this style of eating but it is all WHOLE foods, nothing processed like flour or sugar. After a brief intense week eating exclusively Paleo I expanded into a whole foods eating pattern with some flexibility. Currently about 80-85% of what I eat is Paleo, about 10% is whole but not paleo and about 5-10% is neither. My whole non-paleo foods are oats and legumes. My non-whole non-paleo favorites include homemade whole wheat pizza, blue corn chips, chocolate and ice cream.