I’ve been online buddies with George, the author of the new e-book Caveman Feast, for quite a while now. I remember that while visiting us last year The Food Lovers watched me photograph photos for Eat Like a Dinosaur with a point-and-shoot camera and said, “Have you seen George at Civilized Caveman Creations photos? It’s amazing what he does with a point-and-shoot!” And that memory became etched in my mind as the first thing I knew about George.
It should come as no surprise, that like quite a few of us in the community, George hoisted himself up by his boot-straps, taught himself how to cook, how to take photos and how to gain the adoration of nearly 30,000 Facebook fans. He’s nothing like his cartoon caricature; he’s a muscle-bound-force to be reckoned with. He’s full of personality and opinions, all of which are highly entertaining to read on his site Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations.
I’ve known for a while that George was working on an e-book, but I had no idea he was teaming with Abel James in order to provide a whole package of paleo info with his massive collection of recipes. And massive they are, when Matt and I first opened the book and were looking through my first out-loud thought was, “Holy cow, how many yummy looking beef recipes are there?” and Matt’s response? “Stacy, this is a MAN’S cookbook!”
But it’s not just a man’s cookbook. Just like all of our cooking and kitchen endeavors, our kids were happy to engage in helping us “test” and review George’s book. Inspired by a farmer’s market visit, we found two recipes that the kids were excited about, happy to help in the kitchen with, and devoured with no pause at all.
In Virginia fall has arrived. It was the perfect opportunity for us to pick apples for some of our favorite recipes, like applesauce, apple butter and dried apple tidbits (in Eat Like a Dinosaur).
But the king of creative flavor combinations (for example, blueberry Brussels sprouts), George, used apples in burgers. The boys loved the idea! So we made Apple Dijon Burgers with our freshly picked apples.
We’ve found that sliders work much better in our house, since the boys like the idea of eating 2 or 3 “burgers” and this helps their portions be much more reasonable. George’s burgers worked well for this purpose. The boys loved them!
We paired the sliders with a squash we’ve heard a lot about through George and other blogger’s sites, but have never tried ourselves. As soon as we saw local, organic Delicata Squash at our farmer’s market that same morning – I knew exactly which recipe we had to try in Caveman Feast!
The boys loved helping and scooped the seeds out. It was a great opportunity to talk about the squash family and how Delicata’s were kind of like pumpkins. Then at dinner, we all gave our esteemed culinary perspectives on whether it tasted like a pumpkin, too.
Cooking from Caveman Feast was fun. There’s lots of meaty things the boys enjoy (the Beef & Cinnamon Butternut Squash recipe is another favorite). And if you’re interested in the package George and Abel put together, I’d buy it before the sale price goes away!
