Primal Kitchen Dark Chocolate Almond Bar Review

Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar

I seem to be in search of the perfect Primal energy bar. I’ve already looked at Exo (my favorite), Chapul and RXBAR. Exo and RXBAR are great options for those that want a whole food source, crickets and whey protein respectively, and carry a good dose of fat also. So after I reviewed those bars I thought I was set with my two perfect options for a quick breakfast or snack at Disneyland. Then scrolling on Instagram one day I came across all these Paleo folk saying they got sneak peaks of this new bar out of Primal Kitchen: Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar.

I immediately got in touch with the people at Primal Kitchen and asked if they could send some bars for me to review and they told me they sold out almost instantly of all these bars but they had a couple still lying around that they were willing to send to me for review. Man was I excited. These bars are different. They meet every requirement of a great Primal energy bar, and as you’ll read below, they seem to be superior to every other bar out there. Let’s take a look at our three categories: Nutritional Profile, Affordability, Taste.

Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar

Nutritional Profile

Now this is really what separates these bars from the pack. My main focus on finding a great Primal energy bar is to make sure it’s not loaded with sugar, has a good amount of fat for energy and has a real whole food protein source. Considering all three of these categories like we did for Exo and RXBAR- these Primal Kitchen bars blow everyone else out of the water.

See some people maybe have a problem with Exo and RXBAR because they use crickets and whey. Not everyone loves crickets and whey. Primal Kitchen on the other hand uses collagen. Collagen you say? Yes. Check out the FAQs from their own site:

Q: WHAT THE HECK IS COLLAGEN?

A: Collagen is the protein that holds everything in your body together. It makes up about 30% of all the protein in the human body, and is found in your bones, tendons, ligaments, connective tissues and skin, and plays various roles in your overall health. Collagen production naturally declines with age, reducing the structural integrity of the skin and instigating the weakening of cartilage in joints. You can help make up for decreased collagen production by eating collagen sourced from grass-fed bovines pasture-raised in Brazil.

Q: WHY SHOULD I EAT COLLAGEN?

A: The collagen protein used in Primal Kitchen Dark Chocolate Almond Bars is collagen hydrolysate from grass-fed cows, which is broken down into individual amino acids and easier to absorb and digest, so it’s a preferable alternative to taking collagen in, say, capsule form. Furthermore, it’s 100% protein, and we all know the benefits of ingesting clean protein.

Collagen is such a great option for protein bars and it’s something I haven’t seen packaged quite like this before. This may be a great option for you if the idea of crickets is weird to you or if you don’t do whey protein. I’m pretty sure every Paleo and Primal person should do collagen.

Let’s take a look at how the rest of the bar breaks down:

Primal Kitchen Dark Chocolate Almond Bars
Total Fat: 15g
Total Carbohydrate: 14g (Dietary Fiber 6g, Sugars 3g)
Protein: 15g
Ingredients: Almonds, Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Grass-Fed Collagen, Isomalto-Oli – gosaccharides (Cassava Root), Water, Coconut Flakes, Honey, Natural Flavors, Coconut Oil, Bitter Chocolate, Cocoa Powder, Himalayan Pink Salt, Monk Fruit Extract, Tocopherols (Vitamin E)

Now there’s no way to look at that and every other bar out there (including my favorites Exo and RXBAR) and not determine that this bar is superior. It has more fat than the rest, less sugar than the rest and more real protein than the rest. I would consider that superior.

Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar

Affordability

Well ok you may say, ok Randall you say these bars are superior but how much will it cost me?

Primal Kitchen Dark Chocolate Almond Bars
Price per bar: $2.99
Price per 12 bar box: $35.95

At about $3 a bar that’s a steal in my opinion. You can look at my review regarding Paleo granola and realize that you’ll have to pay more for better food. Sure you could spend less on a sugar laden soy bar or you could spend slightly more and eat a superior protein bar.

If you look at these bars as what they are, real food, it’s a great deal to have something on hand that has such a great breakdown of fat, carbs and protein. Not to mention that there’s no way I would go out of my way to buy all these ingredients and try to make this bar myself at home, I’d rather have a 12 bar box on hand and grab one when I need some real whole food that’s gonna fill me up and give me energy in a pinch.

Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar

Taste

Man are these bars good. Their taste is a really pleasant dark chocolate taste. Not too sweet but just the right amount of sweet for me. The only part that was a little tough was the texture to these bars. They are really chewy, not sure if all of them will be that chewy or if it was just the ones sent to me. The crunch to these bars was just perfect though to break up all the chewiness.

As for the collagen – didn’t even taste it. Don’t think you’re gonna bite into these bars and taste a cup of bone broth. Not happening. Just know that you will taste a pleasant dark chocolate nutty, slightly sweet bar that has 15g of collagen packed protein into it.

Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar

Conclusion

I think I found my new favorite protein bar. I will definitely be alternating between these and my Exo subscription. The only problem is that these bars have been out of stock on their site since they were announced. So keep checking back on their page to see when they’re back in stock and grab a box of 12 for yourself. If you buy them and don’t like the rest of the box feel free to contact me and I’ll eat them for you.

Thanks Primal Kitchen for making the perfect primal energy bar!

Get your Primal Kitchen’s Dark Chocolate Almond Bar Here

Easy Primal Spaghetti

Happy National Spaghetti Day. You don’t have to skip out on a plate of spaghetti today just because you decided to go Primal this year. You can still enjoy a nice spaghetti dish without all the carbs and wheat by making this simple meat sauce with julienne zucchini or spaghetti squash. This recipe is great if you want a nutritional Primal meal that’s super easy. Sure you can make your own spaghetti sauce like I did here for my silkworm spaghetti but sometimes dinner needs to be really easy to assemble. So for this recipe we use jars of spaghetti sauce. I look for two main things when buying spaghetti sauce for this recipe:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
No Added Sugar

This may be pretty tough to find a sauce that meet those two requirements because most sauces have cheap cancer oil like canola oil and added sugar. So for this recipe I used these jars of sauce:

Clean spaghetti sauce with no added sugar and real extra virgin olive oil

So enjoy National Spaghetti Day guilt free and whip up some of this super easy sauce and noodles. We normally double the sauce recipe and make a bunch of frozen portions, so the photos below are a doubled portion of my ingredient list for the sauce. So don’t freak out if your pot doesn’t look that full!

Spaghetti Squash before oven

Spaghetti Squash after oven

Spaghetti Squash after shredding

Fresh herbs
Fresh thyme, basil & oregano

Zucchini before the microwave

Zucchini after the microwave

Grass fed ground beef

Sweet Italian pork sausage

Finished sauce ready to eat!

Plated ready to eat

Easy Primal Spaghetti

2016-01-04 14:53:19

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Ingredients

1lb Grass fed ground beef
1lb sweet sausage ground
(or 2lb of any mix you like bison, boar, venison, rabbit, etc…)
2 25oz jar of clean spaghetti sauce
Half stick of grass fed butter
Handful of fresh basil, oregano, thyme
Freshly grated parmesan (optional)
4 Zucchini or
1 Spaghetti Squash

Instructions

My wife likes julienne zucchini for the pasta alternative and I like spaghetti squash. So depending on what pasta alternative you choose will determine what you start first. If you do spaghetti squash you’ll want to get that in the oven first. If you do zucchini you’ll do that last.
Spaghetti Squash
I like to bake the spaghetti squash based on the way Melissa Joulwan outlines in Well Fed because it comes out perfect every time. Turn the oven to 375° and place the squash, cut in half and seeds scooped out, face down on a parchment lined baking tray. Add 3 tablespoons of water to the tray and bake for 35 minutes.
Once done baking let the squash cool. Then use a fork to scrape the flesh of the spaghetti squash into noodle like strands.
Zucchini Noodles
Use this julienne peeler and julienne 2 zucchini per person, so 4 for 2 people, and put in a microwave safe container and microwave covered for 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper when out of the microwave.
Spaghetti Sauce
Cook the ground beef in a skillet until all the pink is cooked out. Season with salt and pepper. Chop up the meat so it's in small crumbles.
Get the spaghetti sauce warmed up in a big pot like this on low. Once the ground beef is finished, add it to the sauce warming up.
Then cook the ground sausage until cooked through. Once done add to the sauce also.
Chop up all your herbs and toss into the sauce. Add in butter also and stir around so everything mixes together nicely. If the spaghetti squash is still going let it finish and keep the sauce on low flame until you’re ready to serve. If you’re doing zucchini then now you can get that going in the microwave.
Once everything is done, assemble your plate and top with freshly grated parmesan if you like. Enjoy!

That's So Primal https://www.thatssoprimal.com/

Simplifying Paleo So it Sticks in the New Year

It’s a new year and the internets are rampant with new diets and exercise regimes to jump into in hopes of losing weight and getting healthier. Depending on where you’re at in your health journey you can start a whole30 today, or you can start a 21 day challenge or if you’re already a veteran Paleo check out these 10 lessons learned from Russ Crandall. Whatever you do starting this new year you have to start somewhere and that’s where I think it can be overwhelming for some. There is just so much out there and it can be difficult determining where to start so here is a template for simplifying Paleo so it sticks in the new year.

So I want to propose something easy to swallow. A foundation for eating. Basically providing a template on where you can base your meals for breakfast, lunch & dinner. The reason for this is because so many people start diets and sign up for gyms at the beginning of the new year and end up falling off the wagon shortly after. So my goal is to simplify Paleo so that it sticks. I don’t want to provide specific recipes because if you’re just starting Paleo or already a veteran; recipes can be overwhelming or not needed.

Why start with food and not a template for exercise? Well, while exercise is necessary for health, all health starts first with what you eat. Weight loss and health doesn’t start with exercise. Weight loss and health starts with what we eat and put in your body. So if you’re looking to lose weight or just be overall healthier – start here with what you should eat for breakfast, lunch & dinner. Remember this is just a starting point not an end point. You can start here for your meals and expand on them for what works best for you and your family. Starting out here is great for losing weight and seeing how you do then when you reach your ideal weight you can add in more starches like white potatoes and white rice.

Though it’s already the new year maybe plan your grocery trip before the start of the week and begin this template Monday. Review the basics of Primal here if this is all new to you and you’re trying to figure out what’s Paleo/Primal. But for now let’s check out a simple and easy template for your daily meals:

Breakfast – Bacon & Eggs

A photo posted by Kristi Creasey (@hikristi) on Oct 1, 2015 at 12:07am PDT

Breakfast couldn’t be easier to figure out. It’s dead simple and it’s exactly what we need for the morning – protein. Get yourself some eggs and bacon from the store. Cook the bacon first then use the bacon fat for your eggs and boom – Primal breakfast done. Note: I started out this way on Primal a few years ago but now I normally fast for breakfast throughout the week and just eat lunch around 11:30am. So depending on if you’re hungry in the morning, you can always fast and just go straight to lunch.

Lunch – Salad

#lunch

A photo posted by That’s So Primal (@thatssoprimal) on Oct 29, 2015 at 2:27pm PDT

Get yourself some organic mixed greens or whatever salad mix you like and throw it in a bowl with olive oil and vinegar or some Tessemae’s dressing. Add in whatever veggies, seeds or nuts you like. Then add in some protein in the form of leftovers from the night before or cans of fish i.e. tuna, sardines or salmon.

Dinner – Meat & Roasted Veggies

I love this Cacao-Rubbed Steak recipe by @thedomesticman. Link to it in the profile. #dinner

A photo posted by That’s So Primal (@thatssoprimal) on Oct 29, 2015 at 8:11pm PDT

Dinner doesn’t have to be hard. Throw some protein on the grill or in a crockpot and use your oven and some baking trays to roast some veggies in the fat of your choice: lard, butter, coconut oil, olive oil, duck fat, tallow, etc… You don’t even need to follow a recipe for this really. Just make sure to use seasonings and fat to make the veggies tasty. This is a good post to check out if you’ve never roasted veggies before or check out my roasted broccoli that has become a staple in our house.

Remember these meals are just a template and a base to start from. Some days may look completely different. Don’t expect perfection. Expect that some days you might eat a doughnut or nachos but know that your foundation for eating 80% of the time should be based around these types of meals listed above. Then leave the 20% of things you eat for times that planning meals may be out of your control: office parties, birthdays, Disneyland or just because you’re craving ice cream. As Michelle from Nom Nom Paleo says think of Paleo as the main highway and expect to take slight detours every so often.

Cricket Noatmeal

I’ve already hinted at this Cricket Noatmeal recipe on my post about quick on the go primal breakfast ideas. This recipe was inspired by the chia flax pudding by Kelly from Be Well by Kelly and was something I first saw on Mark’s Daily Apple. Since I first saw this recipe my wife and I have been making it constantly.

Ingredients

It’s a great quick go to meal that is full of fat and protein. But most of all it’s a really easy way to get our daughter to eat more protein. Protein in the form of whey that’s mixed into the pudding. As we’ve been feeding this to her and sending frozen batches of it with her when she stays with the grandparents, we’ve just been referring to it as no-oatmeal, hence the post title Noatmeal. It’s just easier for people to understand instead of saying well I know it kinda looks like oatmeal but we don’t really eat oatmeal, and this pudding is more nutritious than oatmeal and has a much much lower glycemic load than oatmeal… you see the dilemma. It’s easier to just say this is Noatmeal, our daughter loves it, she’ll ask for more. Now since this chia flax pudding is so loved by our daughter, we’ll be feeding it to her until she moves onto something else. But for myself I decided to see if we could switch up the recipe a little bit by playing with the protein source. Like say… Crickets.

Cricket Flour

I have nothing against whey. It works, tastes fine and has many additional benefits. So to change up the protein used in this recipe was basically just for fun. So I reached out to the people who provide the cricket flour to Exo for their protein bars and they were very generous and sent me a bunch of cricket flour and whole roasted crickets to experiment with. (More on the whole roasted crickets in a couple months). So all I had to do was replace the whey in the original recipe with the cricket flour and coconut sugar for sweetener. The only problem is if you try to match the amount of protein from the whey serving (20g) you’ll have to use about 5T of cricket flour. That’s almost too much cricket flour for the portion size so we ended up just using one serving of cricket flour (2T) which is about 8g of protein. Not bad for a quick breakfast that uses a protein that’s highly bio available, sustainable and high in omega 3s.

Close Up

So if you’re feeling adventurous head over to Entomo Farms and whip up a batch for yourself. It’ll definitely give you something to talk about with family around the Christmas dinner table.

Cricket Noatmeal

2015-12-23 09:24:40

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Ingredients

1T coconut oil
1 cup coconut milk
3T chia seeds
3T ground flax seed
2T cricket flour
1T coconut palm sugar
1/4t cinnamon
Dash of tumeric

Toppings

Paleonola
Hemp Seeds
Honey if you need it sweeter

Instructions

Heat the coconut oil, coconut milk, chia seeds and ground flax seed in a pan. Continue stirring on medium/high for about 3 minutes until the texture becomes like oatmeal.
Once the noatmeal is done, turn off the heat. Stir in the cricket flour, coconut palm sugar, cinnamon and numeric.
Then put it all into a bowl and add your toppings and extra coconut milk to your preference. Enjoy!

Adapted from Chia Flax Hot Pudding

That's So Primal https://www.thatssoprimal.com/

Slow Down

My daughter was about 8 months this time last year. Now she’s about 20 months (8+12 duh) with another baby due in February.

Birthday
Our daughter was born April 16, 2014

This is our daughter at 18 months

Everyone said it – time flies so fast – and it really does. But no matter how many photos or videos I take to try to document our daughter’s life – life is still flying by. This time of year especially it really seems like time is flying by. Everyone’s moving at a million miles an hour during the Holidays of Thanksgiving to Christmas to New years. Year after year the cycle repeats itself and can, over time, create what was supposed to be a very enjoyable time to be a very unenjoyable time of year. So what are we to do? Slow down. I know you’ve probably heard this before, but sometimes people need to hear things repeatedly before they finally take action. Hopefully this is the last time you need to hear it before you actually take action: Slow Down. Below I’ve listed a few areas in our life that definitely need slowing down this time of year.

1. Slow down the phone

We all get too wrapped up in our phones. They’re almost like the worst thing and best thing that have happened to our generation (slight exaggeration here). Just look around the next time you’re at a restaurant or at some other public place – everyone is on their phone. Look around at the Christmas gatherings you’ll probably be attending – again, everyone on their phones. So the other day I decided to put down my phone and be very intentional of the time I had with my daughter. I didn’t try to get the perfect photo of my daughter, or try take a video of her kissing a piece of bacon. We actually went outside and all I did was sit there and watched her as she explored our backyard. Sure she ate not one but two handfuls of dirt from our garden, but it was fun to just hang out with her, let time slow down and not be on my phone obsessed with trying to capture that perfect moment of her to post on instafacetwitter. Now you may be saying well Randall I don’t have kids so I have nothing to do other than hang out on my phone and look at Instagram or play a super addicting game. But I challenge you to try to actually do nothing still. Just sit there. Go outside and do nothing. Get a bon fire going and just hang out, look at the stars, watch the birds, just sit. The only way to actually slow down, is to do just that – slow down.

2. Slow down the TV

Now sitting around watching Christmas movies is something I love to do with my wife, so I’m not suggesting to do away with the TV all together. I’m suggesting to just not let it be the only thing you do with your free time this Christmas season, because before you know it 4 hours flew by and all you did was watch Home Alone 1 & 2. Now what else could you do with that 4 hours? A lot of things actually:

Go on a walk with your loved ones to look at Christmas lights.
Sit around and play old school Words With Friends, aka Scrabble.
Read Christmas stories.
Take your kids to a park.
Sing Christmas songs.

Just try to do something that’s outside of the norm, doesn’t include your tv, phone or computer, and creates new memories for you and your kids to remember.

3. Slow down the cooking

There’s a reason fast food is called fast food. Because it’s… fast. Food shouldn’t be fast. Food should always be slow and this time of year we really need to harness that. Instead of being wrapped up on buying a million gifts that no one needs or trying to run around to different parties, how about you just stay home, order from Amazon and cook something slow. Look around for recipes that take all day to roast or maybe finally take the time to try out cooking that recipe you’ve been wanting to try like this one or this one, that you otherwise don’t have “time” to cook. And do this activity with a loved one or your kids. Make these really good cookies with your kids instead of just buying a box of fast made wheat and soy filled cookies from the store. Just make it fun and slow. Enjoy the extra time we have this time of year and really dive into the kitchen.

4. Slow down and sleep

Sleep is important. Not sure if you know that. We need 7–9 hours of sleep. It’s not really a suggestion, there’s good evidence showing that we need this much sleep. So what better time to actually practice this good habit other than Christmas and New Years break where we have a few extra days off, or maybe you (lucky) have 2 straight weeks off. Just be sure that if you’re still sucked into your phone and tv to wear blue blocking glasses or install f.lux on your computer so that you don’t throw off your circadian rhythm. I know it sounds hippy, but it’s a real thing. The more we keep looking at blue light when we’re trying to go to bed, the more we’re telling our brain it’s daytime when it’s actually 10pm.

Slowing down may look completely different for you and your family but these are just some ways I see my life being effected by not slowing down. If you have any other ideas on how you can slow down feel free to share them in the comments below. Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas!

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