Caveman Food

Yummy Chicken (or turkey) Stock

2011-02-15T09:31:00.005-05:00

You hear about the benefits of chicken stock, both nutritional and culinary, almost everywhere you look. I tried for years to make it part of my arsenal but I had some kind of mental block and never succeeded in making a stock that I thought tasted any good at all. I would try to hide it in things so I couldn't taste it. I was very happy to finally figure out how the heck to make good tasting stock, so I will share it with you!

YUMMY CHICKEN (OR TURKEY) STOCK

ingredients:
1 whole chicken OR 2 whole turkey legs (thighs + drumsticks)
2-3 chicken feet, scored, optional
any extra leftover bones you have kicking around, optional
1 carrot, cut into 1-in chunks
2 stalks of celery, cut into 1-in chunks
1 onion, quartered
handful of fresh parsley
10-15 peppercorns

Put the chicken or turkey in a stockpot and cover with water. Bring up to a simmer and then discard the now scummy water. Cover the bird with water again and this time add in all the other ingredients. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam/scum that rises to the top. Lower to a bare bubble and cook for 2 hours. You don't want the stock boiling because it will make the meat very tough, so make sure it really is a bare bubble. After 2 hours, fish the chicken or turkey out of the pot and pull all the meat off the bones and save it for later. Return the bones/cartilage/skin/etc to the pot and cook for another 2 hours. Strain, bottle, and refrigerate. If you're lucky it will turn to jello in the fridge!

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The key to this, I think, is the initial discarding of the water and cooking the meat with the bones for the first bit so that the stock gets a much meatier, nicer flavor. If you cook the meat too long though it won't taste very good, so that's why you take it out halfway through and then continue cooking the bones to get some more goodness out of them. I've also found this particular blend of veggies to be pretty yummy.

slow roasted pork shoulder

2011-02-06T21:41:00.004-05:00

I keep meaning to get back to regular posting, but 4-month old babies keep you surprisingly busy. ;) There's not much time for cooking, much less writing blog posts! Luckily this pork shoulder has minimal hands-on time and will feed a small army. You prep it the night before you want to eat and just stick it in the oven the next morning.

SLOW ROASTED PORK SHOULDER

serves: lots

ingredients:
8-10 lb pork shoulder
3 small onions or 1 large onion, sliced
2 oranges, peel left on, sliced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
1 T fennel seeds
salt and pepper

method:
Place the onions and oranges on the bottom of a roasting pan. Score the fat side of the pork in a diamond pattern and place it on top of the onions/oranges. Rub the garlic and fennel into the pork and season with salt and pepper. Cover and marinate overnight in the fridge. The next day, uncover and roast at 275 degrees for 7-8 hours.

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The pork will be almost meltingly tender and the fat nice and crispy. You can serve it right away with the juices from the pan. Leftovers firm up in the fridge and are great browned in a skillet with a little lard. Put it in lettuce wraps with pickled hot peppers and olives. Or you can add some cumin when reheating and use the meat for taco salad along with your favorite toppings. Leftovers are also great in hash. It's very versatile!

before:

after:

*recipe from Wegman's*

what I've been eating

2010-12-21T15:12:00.002-05:00

I'm not ready to start posting recipes yet, but I thought it would be fun to have another installment of "what I've been eating." In the last week I've had...

Roasted chestnuts - this is the only time of year I ever see fresh chestnuts in the store, so I got about half a pound to try them out. I liked them best fresh from the oven, but cold is ok. They definitely have a unique flavor and texture.

Fresh pomegranate - this is the time of year for fresh pomegranates, too, and I find popping the seeds out of the membranes oddly satisfying. Not an activity to do while you're wearing a white shirt though, which I learned the stupid way.

Turkey stock - I finally FINALLY figured out how to make good tasting chicken or turkey stock. Ugh, took me long enough. This will get a recipe post by itself at some point. The batch I made this week was made with turkey legs and it turned to gel in the fridge. I get a kick out of that every damn time.

Hash - I made the turkey stock and had a bunch of leftover meat I picked off the bones, so I made some kind of hash using turkey meat for lunch almost every day. My favorite one was purple potatoes, shiitake mushrooms, spinach, garlic, turkey thigh meat, and cubed country style pate (storebought) that I cooked in butter.

Chicken Normandy - I got the recipe from Simply Recipes. Basically chicken cooked with loads of apples, onions, and heavy cream. Absolutely delicious.

The leftover sauce made its way into a hash the next day, along with some bacon.

Pork with sauerkraut mashed potatoes - this was a recipe from The New German Cookbook. Pork tenderloin poached in my homemade turkey stock and white wine, along with potatoes mashed with wine-spiked sauerkraut, bacon, and caramelized onions. The potato stuff was great and the pork was very tender, although I wish it had been fattier.

Braised beef shank - basically one of my old recipes, although I have since added some tweaks for maximum deliciousness. The major thing is to take the cooking liquid and boil it down until it's reduced by about half and then thicken it up with a little arrowroot to make it like gravy. Then mix the shredded beef/marrow back into it. Also you can do it in a crockpot on low for 8 hours. We had it with lemony sweet potatoes (recipe from Nourishing Traditions, containing loads of butter, lemon, and egg yolks) and buttered green beans.

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I've also had too much birthday cake and German gingerbread, but we shan't speak of these things...

paleo reboot

2010-12-17T14:37:00.005-05:00

So, um, hey guys. It's been awhile. What may have happened in the intervening year, you ask? Well, several things. I moved and had a baby, for starters. I also completely abandoned paleo for multiple reasons, including morning sickness, stress, and burnout on food in general. I really wasn't doing well on paleo near the end of it (around the time I wrote the shrimpy new year post back in Jan 2010) and the time off this past year has given me space to sit back and think about why it wasn't working for me and how I think I can improve it.

In short, I was "faileo" dieting. It had become about what I was excluding instead of what I was including and after 4 years of that my health was suffering. I've made myself a list of things that I think will vastly improve my version of the paleo diet, which I'll share with y'all partly in hopes it may help others and partly for my own reference. A lot of the old recipes on this site are probably more faileo than paleo, but I'm gonna leave them all up anyway in case someone finds them useful/tasty/whatever. So here are the guidelines for my new and improved ancient diet (har har):

1. Eat less meat. Shocking. My old recipes you'll see call for around 1/2 lb per person, and I've since found that this is WAY too much protein for me. I feel way better when I slash that in half.
2. Make the meat I eat fattier. Less chicken breast + olive oil, more fatty beef roasts.
3. Make a concerted effort to eat offal, including bones.
4. Make a concerted effort to eat seafood, including shellfish, roe, and seaweed.
5. Eat at least some meat/seafood raw.
6. Choose animal fats over plant fats whenever possible. I may keep butter around...even though it's dairy I think it's a better option than olive oil, which I previously used by the bucketful.
7. Eat more carbs, choosing tubers and squashes over fruit.
8. Severely limit nuts/seeds.
9. Add in herbal infusions like the nettle infusion that I posted about a million years ago and never kept up with. Tons of nutrients in that stuff.
10. Add in some fermented foods.
11. No "paleo" baked goods.

So I'll be back in January with recipes and pictures just like before. Anything in particular that people would like to see?

A very shrimpy new year

2010-01-03T20:06:00.005-05:00

Hello little blog, how have you been? I've been busy moving and visiting family over the holidays, but now I'm ready to get back to updating you. In fact, my only resolution this year is actually to blog more often! So let's get to it.

I found a nice looking bag of frozen, unpeeled shrimp at my new grocery store (since moving I've swapped a Whole Foods for a Wegman's) and decided what the heck - I don't do a lot of seafood, but I always feel like I should, and shrimp seem a rather unthreatening place to start. I know shrimp overcook pretty easily, so I wanted to make something where I could just drop them in in the last few minutes. My standby curry seemed a good place to start, both for the ease of cooking and for the fact that the strong curryness would hide the seafoody shrimpyness. Yes I'm a wimp.

Curry is one of my favorite go-to meals when I don't really feel like cooking. All it requires you to have on hand are a can of coconut milk, a jar of curry paste, whatever random assortment of veggies you have languishing about, and some kind of meat. The basic instruction is: brown onions in coconut oil, add in all the other ingredients, simmer 20 minutes.

GO-TO CURRY shrimpy style
serves 3 maybe

The culprits today:
copious amounts of coconut oil
half a large onion
2 tiny sweet potatoes
1 stalk of celery
a can of coconut milk
a small jar of green curry paste
1/2 cup frozen peas
huge handful of baby spinach
1 lb shrimp

I heated the coconut oil in a big skillet and set the onions, sweet potatoes and celery to browning. Then I added the curry paste and let it fry for a minute until it got fragrant, followed by the can of coconut milk, and let it simmer for 15 minutes. Then I stirred in the peas and spinach until the spinach started to wilt, followed by the shrimp. Watched it like a hawk and removed it from the heat just when the shrimp turned pink. Done! Served it with lemon wedges to spruce it up a little bit.

To be very strictly paleo you wouldn't want to use the peas or possibly the sweet potatoes, but like I said - just add whatever veggies you have in the house and it'll be fine. My curry is different every single time I make it! If I'm using a different, longer-cooking meat such as chicken, I usually add in at the same time I add the coconut milk.

Since the shrimp I bought needed to be peeled, I was left with a big pile of shrimp shells. I decided to try making some shrimp stock. I have no idea how this tastes yet, and frankly I'm a little leery of it (eww seafood!), but I'm determined to find some way to eat it this week.

I read a few recipes online and amalgamated them to this:

SHRIMP STOCK

shells and tails from 1 lb of shrimp
1/4 of an onion, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1/2 a big carrot, chopped
a few sprigs of parsley
1 small lemon, sliced
1 bay leaf
5 whole peppercorns
1/2 tsp sea salt
water to cover

I combined everything in a smallish pot and brought it to a boil. Skimmed the foam, reduced the heat, and let it simmer for an hour.

Now I have this:

And no idea what to do with it! Please don't say seafood soup, I can't think of anything more horrifying.

In the meantime, maybe I'll start cooking some stuff out of my shiny new cookbooks.

The Whole Beast - Nose to Tail Eating by Fergus Henderson and The River Cottage Meat Book by Hugh Fearlessly-Eatsitall. I can't wait! Happy New Year everyone!

update

2009-12-03T13:27:00.003-05:00

Sorry I've been MIA again. Lots of stuff has been going on here - colds/flu, the holidays, and a somewhat unexpected move. We've known we were going to be moving for a little while, but we thought it wouldn't be until January - well things got pushed up and now we're moving next week! So it's been pretty busy around here.

I'm looking forward to getting back to recipe posting once we move. We're upgrading from a tiny little apartment to a nice sized house, so I'll have a bigger kitchen and a grill. I'm pretty excited. :) The only problem will be trying to figure out where to shop now that I won't have a Whole Foods down the street from me anymore!

I hope everyone has a very happy holiday season and eats lots of yummy food. Just so I don't leave you empty handed, here are some holiday recipes I've bookmarked lately to try out once we get unpacked into the new place:

coconut flour orange cake
Italian chestnut cake (replace milk with a paleo alternative)
walnut cranberry crackers (replace agave with a less fructose-y sugar)

Also I think my parents have been talking about roasting a goose or two for Christmas, so hopefully I can get them to save the fat for me! I can just imagine all the yummy things I could do with a jar of goose fat.

Apple glazed turkey breast

2009-10-21T18:43:00.004-04:00

I've been loving the fall food lately, if you can't tell. :) I think fall definitely has my favorite foods and favorite flavors! The glaze, or sauce, in this recipe really makes otherwise dry turkey breast very moist and delicious.

serves 2

2 turkey breast cutlets, 4-6 oz each
1/4 cup apple juice (or the juice of 1 medium/large apple)
1/4 cup chicken stock
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 T fresh tarragon, minced
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
salt and pepper
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp of arrowroot powder, optional

Make the sauce by whisking the apple juice, chicken stock, garlic, tarragon and ginger together in a small bowl.

Heat a heavy bottomed skillet over medium high heat until good and hot. Add enough olive oil that your meat won't stick (I used about 1T in my cast iron). Salt and pepper the turkey cutlets and sear 2 minutes on each side, then remove to a plate.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the sauce to the pan. Stir to loosen any bits from the bottom, and when the sauce comes to a boil add the turkey cutlets back to the pan. Cook for a few more minutes until the turkey is done through and the sauce has boiled down. If the sauce has boiled down too far, add a little more chicken stock. To tighten up a loose sauce, dissolve the arrowroot powder in 1T cold water, whisk into the sauce and simmer until thickened.

recipe inspired by Low Carb High Flavor Recipes Made Easy by Fiona Carns

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Along with the turkey, we had some steamed broccoli that I just lightly salted and then drizzled with a little cold pressed macadamia nut oil. We also had pumpkin mashed potatoes, which I made by mashing together a mixture of 1/2 white potato and 1/2 pumpkin and then adding salt, chicken stock, a little fresh grated ginger and a little extra virgin olive oil (woulda been better with butter, but it was still good!). If potatoes aren't for you, you could use cauliflower instead.

Ginger Crusted Baked Apples with Date Glaze

2009-10-18T20:23:00.005-04:00

GINGER CRUSTED BAKED APPLES WITH DATE GLAZE
serves 2

ingredients:
2 medium apples (use eating apples rather than baking apples, otherwise they'll turn to mush - I used gala)
2 T almond flour
2 T unsweetened shredded coconut
1 tsp grated fresh ginger (or less if you aren't a ginger freak like I am)
1 egg white
coconut oil
2 T date glaze (recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 425 Fahrenheit and line a baking sheet with foil and parchment paper.

Lightly whisk the egg white. Mix the almond flour, shredded coconut, and grated ginger together on a plate. Cut each apple in half and remove the core.

Dip the cut side of the apple into the egg white, then press firmly into the almond/coconut mixture. Make sure the whole cut surface of the apple is coated, including the cavity where the core was. Place the apple on the baking sheet. There should be just enough almond/coconut mixture to coat all the apples with none to spare. Drizzle with a tiny bit of coconut oil (or olive oil or macadamia nut oil - whatever you have).

Bake at 425 for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and place 1/2 T of date glaze in each cavity. Bake for 3 minutes more. Serve!

Apples (minus date glaze) inspired by "Low Carb High Flavor Recipes Made Easy" by Fiona Carns.

DATE GLAZE (makes a lot)

ingredients:
3/4 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup water
1/8 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Put the dates, water, and cardamom in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes until thick and mostly smooth, adding a tablespoon or two more water if necessary. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Date glaze inspired by Moosewood Restaurant New Classics by Moosewood Collective.

Pumpkin Sausage Soup

2009-10-07T19:27:00.002-04:00

PUMPKIN SAUSAGE SOUP
serves 6

ingredients:
1-1.25 lbs bulk breakfast sausage (if you want to make some yourself, I have a recipe here: http://cavemanfood.blogspot.com/2009/03/turkey-or-pork-breakfast-sausage.html)
1/2 a large onion, minced
1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 small cooking pumpkin, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks (or one 15-oz can of pumpkin)
4 cups chicken stock
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
pinch of dried rosemary
1 tsp paprika
pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt or to taste
2 T butter or some other more paleo cooking fat
1/2 cup coconut milk

Heat the butter in a heavy deep pot and saute the mushrooms over medium-high heat until golden. Remove from the pot to a small bowl, leaving the butter. Add the onions to the pot and saute them until golden, then remove them to a separate bowl. Add the sausage to the pot and brown it until it is cooked through and looks tasty. Remove the sausage from the pot and set aside.

Add the pumpkin to the pot and deglaze with the chicken stock. Add the onions back in and simmer until the pumpkin is soft, about 10 minutes. Puree the soup (a hand blender is easiest, but a regular blender will do). Add in all the remaining ingredients except the coconut milk (don't forget to add in the cooked mushrooms and sausage!), and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the coconut milk.

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That's the hard way to make the soup. :) The easy way is to cook the onions, mushrooms and sausage all together at once and use canned pumpkin, saving some steps and a dirty blender. The easy way makes perfectly fine soup, but it won't have the same layers of texture and flavor that the harder version does.

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recipe adapted from: http://www.recipezaar.com/Low-Carb-Pumpkin-Sausage-Soup-106467

update

2009-08-19T00:24:00.004-04:00

The primal challenge has been going eh. My digestion has never fully recovered from the Korean debacle and it's getting frustrating. Leaving tomorrow a.m. for vacation (New Mexico and then the Jersey shore) and will be gone for a few weeks. I may have internet access or I may not. Luckily for most of the vacay I will have kitchen access and won't be forced to eat out all the time. :)

When I get back I'll go back to posting recipes! It's what you're here for, right? :)

Primal Challenge day 10

2009-08-12T22:25:00.003-04:00

weight: 134.6 (-1, net -1.8)
exercise: walked 1.5 miles, did 10 minutes of bodyweight circuit (squats, lunges, assisted pullups, pushups, planks) that totally wrecked my legs

breakfast:
rolled omelet
leftover Korean banchan
raw tomato

lunch:
smoked mackeral
salad - mixed lettuces, celery, fennel, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
almonds and walnuts

snack: 1 oz raw cheddar and 1/4 of a granny smith apple, same as yesterday

dinner:
Greek yogurt marinated chicken
spicy eggplant
raw tomato

I got a cookbook from the library called The Simpler the Better by Leslie Revsin and it is *great*. Everything in it has few ingredients and a short cooking time, but it's all real good tasting food (unlike a lot of other "5 ingredient or less" cookbooks). The chicken I made tonight was from the book and it was really yummy - just needed a little extra sauce and it would have been perfect.

dessert: hot chocolate made with coconut milk, unsweetened cocoa powder, stevia

My stomach still isn't happy about something. It hasn't been happy since I first had Korean food on Saturday. Maybe I need to do KISS for a few days to sort it out. I hate having such touchy digestion.

Primal Challenge day 9 and a sort of recipe for chicken fingers with a white wine pan sauce

2009-08-11T20:13:00.003-04:00

weight: 135.2 (+1.6, net -1.2) Well it looks like my homemade Korean food bloated me up just as much as the restaurant food did! Oh well. Back to my regular cooking I guess. :)
exercise: Went to the high school track and "sprinted." I put it in quotes because what to me is sprinting is probably a leisurely jog to an actual runner! Haha. I felt like I was dying though. I walked 1.5 laps, jogged 2 straightaways, sprinted 2 straightaways, jogged 1 more, then walked another lap. Five laps total, which I think is 1.25 miles.

breakfast/lunch:
onions sauteed in butter
sliced tomato with salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar
eggs fried in butter
basil on top of everything
raw walnuts
Rainier cherries

That was a lot of food! It was kind of too late to be breakfast and too early to be lunch, which was weird too.

snack:
2 oz raw cheddar cheese
1/4 of a granny smith apple
mug of earl gray tea

dinner:
*chicken fingers with a pan sauce
sliced tomato with salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil
escarole, frisee, radicchio salad with celery, fennel, and white wine vinegar/extra virgin olive oil dressing

dessert:
bite of Dagoba 87% dark chocolate
mug of lemon ginger tea

RECIPE:
*The chicken fingers were pretty good, so here is my hodge podge recipe/method for the curious. :) I cut a pound of chicken breasts into 10 slices (5 per breast, including the tender as 1 slice). I put 2T arrowroot powder in a brown lunch bag along with 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp oregano, 1 tsp sea salt, and a little minced parsley. Put the chicken in and shook it up to coat. Cooked the chicken in ghee until it was brown around the edges, then kept in warm in the oven. Made a pan sauce by deglazing the pan with 1/3 cup each white wine and chicken stock. Let it cook off a little and added a handful of chopped parsley. Thickened it with a pinch of the arrowroot and then melted in some ghee.

Primal Challenge days 6, 7, and 8

2009-08-10T21:32:00.006-04:00

Got too caught up this weekend to blog, but I took pictures of my food and stuff. :)

day 6

weight: 133.2 (-0.4, net -3.2)
exercise: none

breakfast: none

lunch: Went to a Korean buffet. Loaded up on meat that we grilled at the table plus a bunch of little veggie side dishes (banchan). We shared all the meat in the pic (pork belly is on the grill! yum) and all the veggies (plus another smaller plate) and had some orange slices for dessert. Also we had two dipping sauces for the meat that were super salty - I think one was fermented bean paste and the other was soy sauce based. I know the soy sauce probably had wheat in it, but I didn't care for today. :)

dinner: We were so full from lunch we didn't have dinner.

dessert: Strawberry ice cream (coconut milk, frozen strawberries, little spoonful of honey) - it got so thick it burned out the motor of the ice cream maker. :( No more ice cream for me! Tasted really good though.

beverages: green tea, water

**The Korean BBQ got me temporarily obsessed with Asian food. I got some cookbooks out of the library and it influenced my cooking for the next few days.

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day 7

weight: 134.6 (+1.4, net -1.8) This was water weight from the extreeeemely salty Korean food.
exercise: walked 2 miles in the middle of the afternoon and got a little burnt

breakfast: none

lunch: Out at a BBQ joint. I got beef brisket with mint cucumber salad, collard greens, cole slaw, and pickles. Also had a handful of peanuts in the shell and some unsweetened iced tea. Pic from my camera phone because I forgot my camera.

snack:
1/4 cup roasted unsalted almonds
2 tiny dried peach halves

dinner: Leftovers. Hubby had leftover stew from Friday night and salad. I chopped up some veggies that were kicking around the bottom of the fridge (cabbage, bell pepper, scallions, mushrooms) and sauteed them with a little tamari (wheat-free soy sauce) and rice wine. Drizzled with sesame oil off the heat. Fried two eggs and put them on top of the veggies along with some furikake (Japanese condiment you're supposed to sprinkle on rice - this one has some freeze dried veggies and seaweed).

beverages: iced black tea, green tea, water

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day 8

weight: 133.6 (-1, net -2.8) Lost most of the water weight. :)
exercise: walked 3.75 miles in the OMG HORRIBLE HEAT - it should be against the law for it to be in the 90s before noon

breakfast: none

lunch:
cod fillet marinated in a splash each of tamari, mirin, and rice vinegar along with some grated ginger and 1/2 tsp miso
mixed sauteed veggies (cabbage, daikon, mushrooms, scallions) with tamari, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sesame seeds, furikake

dinner: Homemade Korean BBQ spread!
daeji bulgogi (pork bulgogi) - I got the thin sliced pork from the Korean grocery store and made my own marinade
2 kinds of jarred kimchi
toasted seaweed sheets
3 kinds of homemade banchan - daikon salad, mung bean sprouts, mystery greens from the Korean store - all made with some combination of sesame oil, sesame seeds, red pepper flakes, garlic, scallions, rice vinegar, and salt

also 5 cherries for dessert

beverages: green tea, rooibos tea, water

I got the recipes for the daeji bulgogi and banchan from a book I got out of the library called Eating Korean by Cecilia Hae-Jin Lee. I actually have a daeji bulgogi recipe I usually use, but I decided to try the one from the book today. I think I like my other daeji bulgogi recipe better, but the banchan rocked. :)

Sadly though, I am puffed up like a balloon tonight. My tummy did not like something I ate. I am suspecting either soy or sesame, since I don't normally eat either of them and I've been eating them both every day for 3 days. Bah humbug. I was enjoying my Asian food kick.

Primal Challenge day 5

2009-08-07T13:41:00.006-04:00

weight: 133.6 lbs (-1, net -2.8)
Yay, I lost the thyroid med weight!

breakfast:
2 boiled eggs
hot chocolate (1/4 cup coconut milk, 3/4 cup water, 1 T unsweetened cocoa powder, enough stevia to make it sweet)

lunch:
2 fillets of Dover sole cooked in ghee with lemon juice, parsley and mint
green leaf lettuce and radicchio salad with fennel, celery, balsamic, EVOO
roasted unsalted almonds
a peach
2 mugs of iced rooibos tea

snack:
mug of earl gray tea (ok so that's not really a snack)

dinner:
beef, tomato and eggplant stew with basil

exercise:
Walked 3.5 miles. Made it all the way to the public library, which I usually drive to. Then I got antsy later in the day and took another walk, 1.75 miles. I was silly and did the 3.5 mile walk in flipflops and now I have a blister on the bottom of my foot.

Primal Challenge day 4

2009-08-06T13:27:00.009-04:00

Had a nasty surprise today. Went out to the car to find the battery had died. Finally got AAA to come around and the whole thing had to be replaced. There went my morning!

weight: 134.6 lbs (-0.4, net -1.8)

breakfast:
2 boiled eggs
homemade beef jerky
green tea

lunch:
leftover bbq chicken and sausage skillet from Tuesday
salad - green leaf lettuce, carrots, celery, fennel, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
roasted unsalted almonds
green tea

snack:
raw cheddar cheese
homemade beef jerky
roasted buckwheat tea (soba cha - tastes like kashi - my Japanese stepgrandma turned me onto this stuf)

Man, I was hungry today. Breakfast AND a snack? Feeling overfull and bloated yet somehow still hungry. Maybe not enough fat or something.

dinner:
burger patty with raw cheddar (guess it's not raw anymore!) and some tomatillo salsa from yesterday
green beans with butter
celery/fennel/green apple salad with parsley, mint, lime juice, and extra virgin olive oil

exercise: None. Stupid car battery ate my morning up.

I was out doing some errands today and I decided to stop by the outdoors store and try on those Vibram Five Finger shoes everyone's talking about. Well apparently I am in the possession of monster feet rather than human feet, because the toe sizes were just all wrong; it had too small toe pockets for the first two toes while simultaneously having too large toe pockets for the other three toes, with the poor dinky little pinky toe slipping out entirely. There's no way I can wear them. I'm a little sad. I had been planning on rewarding myself with a pair if I stuck to the challenge all month.

Primal Challenge Day 3 plus steak fajita and tomatillo salsa recipes

2009-08-05T14:45:00.011-04:00

weight: 135 lbs (no change)

breakfast: none

lunch:
*leftover beer-marinated steak
*salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrot, celery, cucumber, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil and ground cherries - I've never had ground cherries before but I got them in my CSA and had no idea what to do with them so I threw them in the salad. They were good! Kinda tomatillo-y.
*roasted unsalted almonds
*mug of black tea

snack: none

dinner:
*beef fajita strips
*avocado tossed with sea salt and lime juice
*spicy tomatillo salsa
*sliced tomato with sea salt, black pepper, and exra virgin olive oil

dessert: none

For the fajitas I mostly used this recipe for the marinade: http://www.texascooking.com/recipes/fajitamar1.htm, but I added a jalapeno and a handful of cilantro and a splash of triple sec. I marinated 1.5 lbs skirt steak in it all afternoon, then patted it dry and seared it in a cast iron skillet for 5 minutes on each side. While the meat rested, I poured the leftover marinade back into the pan and let it bubble down a little as I scraped the bottom. Then I sliced the steak and tossed it back in the pan and heated it in the reduced marinade for about 2 minutes. It was great!

I also made some spicy tomatillo salsa because I needed to use up some tomatillos that we got in our CSA. I used this recipe from Rick Bayless: http://topchefs.chef2chef.net/recipes/rbayless/roasted-tomatillo-salsa.htm It is really killer! Super spicy and a great flavor. I think I followed it exactly, for once.

I've been having tomatoes as side dishes a lot because we get them in our CSA and cooked tomatoes give me heartburn.

exercise:
Went to the county parks and recreation website and found a public pool. Paid $8 and swam a few laps then soaked up some sun. Yay vitamin D! Also, I suck at swimming and found it unreasonably exhausting. I could only do 1 full lap without stopping. After that I had to stop halfway across the pool each time. Even so I only managed 4.5 laps. Well you gotta start somewhere, right?

Also I walked 1.5 miles. My butt is sore today from all the walking I did yesterday. Shrink butt, shrink!

Primal Challenge Day 2

2009-08-04T16:25:00.003-04:00

I think I'm going to do most measurements weekly rather than daily, but I will track my weight daily.

weight: 135 lbs (-1.4)

breakfast: none

lunch:
salad - escarole, radicchio, endive, carrots, celery, cucumbers, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
topped with leftover steak from last night's dinner
roasted unsalted almonds
primal limeade - water, lime juice, stevia

snack:
chai - coconut chai teabag, heavy cream, stevia
homemade beef jerky
1 oz cheddar cheese

dinner:
barbecue skillet - onions and cabbage browned in ghee, kielbasa, chicken, pinch of bbq rub, 2T of bbq sauce, topped with shredded cheddar

dessert:
baked raspberries and peaches topped with grated dark chocolate and mint leaves; I used a 6oz container of raspberries and 1 peach for 2 people

exercise:
4.3 miles of strenuous walking, part of it uphill. Really got my heart rate up and the sweat was pouring off me!

Primal Challenge Day 1

2009-08-03T12:15:00.011-04:00

Age: 26
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Weight: 136.4 lbs
Waist at narrowest point: 27 in
Waist at navel: 30.5 in
Hips: 36 in

Breakfast:
none

Lunch:
Large salad - butter lettuce, radicchio, carrot, celery, squid, bacon, balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil
cherries
roasted unsalted almonds
primal lemonade - water, lemon juice, stevia

Snack:
Homemade beef jerky (this batch didn't turn out very well or I'd give you the recipe)

Dinner:
Beer marinated flap steak
Cucumber salad with parsley, mint, extra virgin olive oil and rice vinegar
Sliced tomato with salt, pepper and extra virgin olive oil

Dessert:
87% dark chocolate
peppermint/lemongrass/ginger tea

Exercise:
bodyweight workout that I modified from Son of Grok that I did for 7 minutes - 5 pushups, wall sit for 10 seconds, 20 jumping jacks, 5 stand ups, rest 30 seconds
walked about 1.5 miles

So, you may have noticed that sneaky little word in my big lunch salad...squid?! Well I was at Whole Foods yesterday and as usual I walked by the seafood counter on my way to the butcher case. I usually give it a desultory glance and move on. Yesterday, I noticed a pretty little pile of meat and tentacles at a shockingly low price and I felt a kind of madness steal over me. Before I knew what was happening I found myself telling the fish guy to give me half a pound of squid. I've never bought or cooked squid before in my life. I ended up broiling it, but I think I must have cooked it too long because it got a little rubbery. It was fine tossed in my salad though since I drowned it out with bacon and balsamic vinegar. :)

The steak recipe I used for dinner is reallllllly good. The marinade does include beer though, so if wheat=death for you it might not be your cup of tea.

Overall, I think day 1 has been a success. :)

Primal Challenge! and some rambling

2009-08-03T09:57:00.006-04:00

Ok, so I've been really slacking on my blog. Sorry guys! I've been eating not so great lately. Not terrible, just not great. Also, my doctor put me on thyroid a few weeks back and I just got retested to see if the dosage was accurate and it seems like my levels have gotten worse instead of better. Which sucks, but it at least makes me feel better about the "mysterious" 3lbs that I gained over the last month - which I can now contribute to going even more hypothyroid. Yay.

Anyway, Mark's Daily Apple is hosting a month-long Primal Challenge that starts today! What better way to take control back over my eating! And exercise has always been a weak area for me (ie, I don't exercise at all), so I'm hoping to use the challenge as an incentive to kick my own butt into gear. My short term goal is to look good in a two-piece swimsuit by the time the family vacation rolls around on August 23. I think that's better than a size or weight goal, since I've never done exercise before and I don't know what that will do to my weight (might be heavier at a smaller size, or turn into a gorilla, or something, who knows). I will be doing some traveling this month, but I've used that as an excuse to eat crap in the past and always end up feeling cruddy, so I will be making an effort to remain as Primal as possible while I am out of town. This will be hard when I'm staying in a hotel in New Mexico for a few days, but should be much easier during the family vacation which is 2 weeks at the NJ shore in a house with a fully functioning kitchen and a grocery store down the street.

So how does Primal differ from what I usually do? Well I've been thinking about it. In my head, I've always aspired to "paleo," which to me means basically what is laid out in the book Neanderthin or on the http://www.paleodiet.com and http://www.paleofood.com websites. This roughly means:
No grains, dairy, legumes, sugar, processed foods.
Yes meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts.

It has never meant Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet" plan, which is maybe what some people think of when I use the word "paleo." Anyway, I have never achieved this ideal of mine. In reality, I think I settled on something resembling Mark Sisson's "Primal" plan before it had a name. What that means in real life is that I mostly stuck to my little list up there, but I had cheese or butter sometimes, or dark chocolate, or some beer, or ate at a restaurant a few times a week (without going overboard, but without being a stickler either). I had always referred to it as "paleo-ish," but I think from now on I will just start calling it "Primal" since it has a name now!

Anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to get back into the swing of the diet. I've had that down for years. What will be the challenging part for me is to incorporate all the other stuff. Here are the list of Primal Blueprint rules:

1. Eat lots of plants and animals
2. Avoid poisonous things
3. Move frequently at a slow pace
4. Lift heavy things
5. Sprint once in a while
6. Get adequate sleep
7. Play
8. Get adequate sunlight
9. Avoid stupid mistakes
10. Use your brain

3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 are going to be my challenge areas. I'm excited to get started though! I'm really curious to see what my body can do if I really start treating it right.

I'm going to be keeping a journal of the challenge here on the blog (at least until I go out of town). I'll weigh and measure myself and take pictures today and track those, and I also want to photograph all my food. It will help keep me honest. :) I'll probably also be tweeting, so if you want to follow me give me an add at @kallyn. If you actually read this whole thing, you are a crazy person and I salute you. Give yourself a (Primal, nut-based) cookie! And check back here later!

Spicy burgers with basil mayonnaise

2009-07-15T20:07:00.003-04:00

Made these spicy pork and beef burgers today from N1Kitchen.

They were yum! For the mayonnaise I took the idea and used my own mayo recipe (the one from The Garden of Eating), using half extra virgin olive oil and half cold pressed macadamia oil. I find 100% EVOO mayos much too strong and the macadamia cuts down on that nicely while still remaining a mostly monounsaturated oil. Too bad macadamia oil is so $$$ or I'd use it more often.

We had the burgers with shredded cabbage that I parboiled and then tossed with some of the basil mayo and some steamed broccoli.

We devoured it before I remembered to take a picture, but I thought the recipe was so good I wanted to share it anyway! We were licking the plates clean.

One Local Summer Week 6 - Pork Chili Verde

2009-07-12T15:19:00.008-04:00

I got busy with holiday stuff last weekend and missed out on making a One Local Summer meal, so I'm getting back into the swing of it this week. We have lots of good local food in the house right now - picked up a freezer full of meat from my Polyface Farm dropoff this weekend, bought some nice fruit at the Columbia Pike Farmer's Market today, and I still have a few things leftover from my CSA dropoff last Monday.

This week it seemed like the farmer's market was full of peppers, squash and tomatoes. I already had squash and garlic at home from my CSA, so I went with the peppers today and decided to make some chili verde. I got peppers and onions from Westmoreland Vegetables (couldn't find a website for them) and tomatillos from another farmer's market stand that didn't have a sign and I don't know what the name of the farm was. The lard, pork and chicken stock are all Polyface.

(the squash isn't in the picture, I forgot it in the fridge! it was green and just about the size of my forearm)

PORK CHILI VERDE

ingredients:
2 T lard
1 onion, chopped
2 poblano peppers, chopped
2 cubanelle peppers, chopped
2 Anaheim peppers, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
6 tomatillos, chopped finely
1 green summer squash, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 lb ground pork
2-4 cups chicken stock (depending on how thick you like it)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp dried oregano or 2 T fresh oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Heat the lard in a Dutch oven and brown all the vegetables except the squash and garlic until they start to get soft. Add the garlic and cook for a minute until fragrant. Add the pork and cook until no longer pink. Add the chicken stock and seasonings, bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 1 hour.

Some good non local toppings: fresh cilantro, diced avocado, lime juice

--------------------------------

For dessert I cracked open that big ole watermelon you see up top and cubed it up and we went to town. Seeds everywhere. Ugly, but good. :)

a bunch of old meal pics

2009-07-10T11:35:00.005-04:00

I was going through some of my old pictures today and I found some that I took before I started my blog. I don't intend to really write any of them up as individual posts, but I thought people might be interested in seeing them to get ideas. If you want to see them in a bigger size just click on the picture.

Steak, mustardy mushrooms, salad with almonds and I think tahini dressing.

Blended salad soup. It was, um, an experiment. An experiment gone horribly awry.

Shopping haul.

Fried eggs, blackberries and strawberries with mint, sauerkraut, cucumbers with a drizzle of olive oil.

Ribeye steak, raw fennel salad, roasted green beans and potatoes.

Salmon on a bed of collards cooked with onions and cranberries, garnished with grated carrots and pea shoots. I remember trying to make this picture look fancy but I don't remember why!

Tuna salad and pea shoots wrapped in nori seaweed and a salad with walnuts and tahini dressing.

Pork tenderloin with cinnamon applesauce, sauteed red cabbage, parsley soup. I remember my applesauce recipe for this was awesome (maybe I'll dig it out and post it), but the parsley soup was kind of gross.

Scrambled eggs topped with bacon and a side salad topped with Trader Joe's balsamic frozen veggie mix.

Fried egg with parsley on top of braised swiss chard.

Fried egg on top of sauteed mixed veggies, walnuts and a pear.

Coconut chicken fingers with spicy fruit chutney

2009-07-08T20:21:00.004-04:00

One of the foods my husband and I really miss on the paleo or primal diet is breaded chicken. It's just soul satisfying comfort food for both of us. I do make a gluten free, grain free version of chicken fingers with almond flour sometimes, but tonight I thought I'd try something different. Keeping with the coconut theme I've had lately, I decided to dredge the chicken in unsweetened dried shredded coconut. I didn't want them to be naked, so I wanted to make a sauce, but pan sauce or gravy didn't seem right - so I decided to make a spicy fruit chutney. The result is a tropical dish that's just right for these hot summer evenings!

COCONUT CHICKEN FINGERS
serves 2

ingredients:
1-1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breast cut into large strips (4-5 per breast depending on if they have the tenders attached or not)
2-3 T coconut flour
1-2 eggs, beaten (start with 1 and use the second if you start to run out)
1 cup unsweetened dried shredded coconut
1 tsp sea salt
coconut oil for cooking

Set up a dredging station with 3 bowls, one for coconut flour, one for egg, one for shredded coconut. Season the coconut flour with the salt.

Dredge each chicken finger first in coconut flour, then egg, then shredded coconut.

Heat a bunch of coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed skillet over medium/medium-high heat. Cook the chicken fingers until golden brown on each side. Do it in more than one batch if necessary and keep cooked chicken fingers warm on a foil lined baking sheet in an oven set to the lowest setting.

------------------

SPICY FRUIT CHUTNEY
serves 4

2 cups of diced and peeled plums or nectarines or a mixture of the two
1/4 cup lemon juice
juice of 1/2 a lime
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
2 inches of ginger root, peeled and minced
2 small dried red chili peppers (or 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper)
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup sweet white wine
pinch of sea salt
pinch of stevia, optional depending on if your fruit is really sour (taste before you add!)

Mix everything together in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes until thick. Discard dried chilis and cinnamon stick. Can be eaten warm or cold.

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating.

Coconutty Fruit Salad

2009-06-28T23:00:00.004-04:00

I've been enjoying coconut lately (as you can see from my coconut milk ice cream!), and I came up with this yummy application the other day. I hardly eat fruit at all in the winter since everything is out of season but apples and pears, so when summer comes around I like to have a little fun. I've used a specialty ingredient in this fruit salad, which is coconut butter. It's just like any other nut butter in that it's the whole nut ground up into a paste. The kind I get is Artisana raw coconut butter, which is ground at low temperatures and supposedly retains all the coconutness of the coconut (you know, enzymes, vitamins, fiber, etc). I don't even know if any other companies make coconut butter. Anyway, if you can't find this stuff, I would substitute some unsweetened shredded coconut and maybe a few tablespoons of coconut milk (or even better, if you get the kind of coconut milk that separates in the can into a thick cream and a runny liquid, use only the thick cream).

COCONUTTY FRUIT SALAD

ingredients:
2 heaping cups mixed fruit (pictured is a heaping 1/2 cup each of blueberries, strawberries, red grapes and pineapple)
2 T raw coconut butter
1/4 cup toasted almonds

Cut your fruit any way you want it. Roughly chop the almonds. Gently warm the coconut butter until it becomes runny, then immediately toss with the fruit and nuts. The coldness of the fruit will make the coconut butter harden back up and stick to it like a shell. Dig in and enjoy! I've had this as breakfast, snack, and dinner side dish in the past few weeks. :)

Coconut Milk Ice Cream

2009-06-28T22:34:00.006-04:00

I don't really find most sweet dessert type things appealing anymore (especially pastry - blech), but I still have a soft spot for ice cream. I just love the stuff. There is a brand of ice cream I can find at Whole Foods that's made with coconut milk instead of dairy or soy, but the sweetener is agave syrup, which I won't eat due to the extremely high fructose content and heavy processing it undergoes. So now that the weather has been hot I have been making little ice cream treats at home. Last week I made some strawberry ice cream using this recipe from Elana's Pantry but subbing raw honey for agave. It was very nice. This week though, I got some lavender from my CSA and I decided to make a honey lavender ice cream. Forget "very nice," this stuff is AWESOME. And it's completely dairy and agave free! I've used a custard base for it, so it's a little more complicated to make than Elana's recipe, but the result is decadent. The base of this paleo ice cream would be very nice even without the lavender and could serve as a jumping off point for other mix-ins/flavorings.

COCONUT MILK ICE CREAM
honey/lavender/vanilla version :)

1 14-oz can full fat coconut milk
2 eggs
1 vanilla bean, cut in half lengthwise
1 T chopped fresh lavender flowers, optional (1 tsp dried)
3 T raw honey (adjust up or down to taste, but less honey will make it freeze much harder in the freezer)
ice cream maker

Set up a double boiler by placing a heat proof bowl over a pot of simmering water (be sure it's simmering and not a full rolling boil, as this will give you better control later). Add the coconut milk and lavender to the bowl. Scrape the insides of the vanilla bean into the coconut milk, then throw in the whole bean pod as well. Stirring fairly frequently, heat until the coconut milk is hot but not boiling.

Meanwhile, whisk the eggs well in a separate bowl. Once the coconut milk is hot, add a ladleful to the eggs while you're whisking - you want to bring the eggs up to the temperature of the coconut milk without scrambling them. Add in another ladleful of hot coconut milk to the egg mixture while whisking. Take the now hot egg mixture and whisk it into the bowl of coconut milk on the double boiler.

Now, whisk constantly until the mixture thickens to a custard. This may take several minutes. If it's getting too hot and starting to scramble, remove from the heat immediately but keep whisking, then return it to the double boiler. Once it has thickened to a custard, remove the bowl from the heat and let it cool.

Remove the vanilla bean pods. Once the custard is cool enough for you to stick your finger in it and hold it there without burning, whisk in the raw honey. Put the custard base in the refrigerator or freezer until it gets cold. Freeze in your ice cream machine per the manufacturer's instructions.

Straight out of the machine this ice cream has a creamy soft serve texture. If you store it in the freezer for later, just let it sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes before eating to let it soften up a little bit.

One Local Summer - Week Four

2009-06-28T11:29:00.005-04:00

One of the nice things about blogging on my own schedule is that I can wait until I have something good to show you before posting about it. Since I'm not posting on my on schedule with this One Local Summer thing, this week you get to see some of my blah food.

I guess it doesn't look too bad, but it was just meh. We had green onion burgers made with ground beef from Smith Meadows Farms, lots of green onions from our CSA and held together with an egg from our CSA. On the side was a little slaw made with kohlrabi and basil from our CSA and a touch of extra virgin olive oil and vinegar. We also had some lovely golden zucchini from Red Rake Farm with some more CSA basil, sauteed up with a little lard that I rendered from Polyface pork fat. Nothing was bad exactly, but there is nothing here I would make again.

The golden zucchini I got from Red Rake Farm were so pretty. The guy told me that the day before they had been about an inch or two long and they literally quadrupled in size overnight!

I hope he has some more next week so that I can find something yummier to do with them. :) In the mean time, check out what other Southern folks are getting up to this summer at last week's roundup.

One Local Summer - Week Three

2009-06-21T20:07:00.003-04:00

This week for One Local Summer I had a near miss that turned into a delicious hit! I love making great tasting food that's from local producers and also healthy and paleo - gluten and dairy free.

The star of dinner tonight was a roasted chicken from Polyface Farms. I rinsed and dried the chicken and then generously salted and peppered it inside and out. The outside I wrapped in bacon from EcoFriendly Foods and the inside I stuffed with two of the season's first peaches from Westmoreland Berry Farm. Into the oven at 425 for 30 minutes, then I reduced the heat to 350 and roasted it for an additional hour.

The plan was to end up with delicious bacon-wrapped chicken and some roasty peach chunks. My oven had other plans!

Now, I've made bacon wrapped chicken before and it's always turned out, but this time for some reason the bacon shriveled to itty bitty bacon cinders and became inedible. So not only did I have burned bacon, but I had flabby chicken skin. Erg. I removed the peaches from the chicken and noticed they were not roasty at all either. My plans had been foiled, but I thought there had to be some way to salvage this food. After a moment's pondering I set the bacon cinders aside and carved the chicken into two leg quarters, two breasts, and two wings. I put the chicken pieces on a foil lined baking sheet and put them back in the oven to turn the flabby skin crispy. What to do with the peaches...aha! Gravy!

To make the gravy, I took the peaches from the chicken cavity and heated them in a small saucepan with a good spoonful of drippings from the roasting pan and 1/4 cup sweet white wine from Rose Bank Winery along with a pinch of salt and about 1 inch of cinnamon stick. I put the heat to low, covered it, and let it simmer while I went to work on the veggie sides. I don't know if Rose Bank Winery can be considered local to northern Virginia, but we used to live about 3 minutes away from this winery and we bought a whole case of the wine that we're still working on! So it was local to us at one point. :)

To get our leafy greens in for the day I made some braised kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. First I sauteed some baby onions from our CSA in the chicken/bacon drippings, then added the kale and a little water, covered, and let it braise for about 15 minutes.

To add some freshness to the meal, I made a quick cucumber salad using crispy little Persian cucumbers from Toigo Orchards. They are so snappy and delicious! I tossed them with some chopped orange mint from Red Rake Farm, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, and a splash of rice vinegar. Red Rake Farm is one of my favorite stands at the Arlington Farmer's Market. It's all organic and their produce looks more "real" to me than some of the other places for some reason. And the owner, Peter, is always ready with a smile and story. Much nicer than shopping at a grocery store!

Once the veggies were ready, the chicken skin was crispy and the peaches were nice and broken down for the gravy, and dinner was served! I think everything tied together very nicely - the crispy chicken skin with the sweet warm peach gravy, the tender kale, and the cool fresh cucumbers. My husband even ate the bacon cinders and said they kind of tasted like pork rinds. Success!

One Local Summer - Week Two

2009-06-14T21:28:00.004-04:00

I kind of slacked on One Local Summer this week. I was expecting an abundance of veggies from my CSA, which just started this past Monday, but instead all I got was a handful of salad greens, some garlic scapes, and a head of Chinese cabbage. It's been a rough, wet spring here in Virginia. So I headed to the farmer's market on Saturday (yesterday) morning to get some goodies for this week's local meal.

My planned meal included spicy chipotle chorizo made from free range buffalo and pork from Cibola Farms. I also picked up some red potatoes and curly kale from Pleasant Fields Farm. I was going to cut the potatoes and sausage into chunks and roast them together and serve them on a bed of braised kale. Alas, my meal was not to be. My husband and I decided to go to The National Zoo today and ogle the cute animals, which delayed lunch until 3:30 p.m. - a time falling squarely into what we refer to as "the black hole of eating." Neither of us was hungry for dinner in the slightest, so our local feast will just have to wait until tomorrow. Too bad the post can't wait for tomorrow, but OLS has a deadline. ;)

To see what other people in my region (Southern) have been up to, check out last week's roundup!

One Local Summer - Week One

2009-06-07T21:12:00.003-04:00

Back in April I signed up for the One Local Summer event over at Farm to Philly. I thought it would be a neat way to challenge myself to really use more local and seasonal ingredients in my cooking. I'm excited to see what northern Virginia has in store for me this summer! We were pretty busy this weekend, so my first local meal was a pretty basic brunch we had on Saturday morning before heading off for the day.

We had bacon, eggs, and fruit salad with whipped cream.

The bacon I picked up at the farmer's market from a kind of local farm aggregate called EcoFriendly Foods. It comes from pastured pigs and is cured with just salt and sugar. It was definitely the best local bacon I've had so far, but not quite as good as the local bacon we used to get when we lived in New Jersey from Cherry Grove Farm.

The eggs were from Joel Salatin's famous and fabulous Polyface Farm. I joined their buying club a few months ago. Every month I place an order with them and pick it up from one of their northern Virginia drop off spots. I cooked the delicious dark yolked eggs in some of the fat left over from cooking the bacon.

The fruit salad was strawberries from Toigo Orchards and some not-so-local peaches (they came from Georgia via Whole Foods). I would have left the peaches out happily, but they were in my fruit basket and going bad, so into the salad they went. To top our fruit I whipped a little heavy cream from J-Wen Farm. Selling raw milk is illegal in Virginia unless you go through a cow sharing program, but the stuff from J-Wen is not homogenized and is just pasteurized rather than ultrapasteurized. The fruit was so naturally sweet that the whipped cream didn't require any sugar. I don't eat very much dairy at all, but I just had a hankering this weekend so I picked the cream up at the farmer's market.

And there you have it!

Salsa Pulled Pork

2009-06-04T18:31:00.003-04:00

This is probably the easiest recipe I'll ever share with you, and also one of the most delicious and rewarding!

SALSA PULLED PORK

ingredients:
1 jar of your favorite salsa
1 pork tenderloin

Quantities are not exact and don't matter anyway. Put the pork into a crockpot, dump the salsa on top, and cook it on LOW for 6-8 hours. When you're ready to eat, just shred the meat with two forks.

The meat is tender and delicious and people will think you put some serious effort into cooking, but it just couldn't be any easier.

Son of Grok's Carrot Cake Caveman Cookies

2009-05-28T20:54:00.004-04:00

I made these Carrot Cake Caveman Cookies from SoG's blog today:

Go check out the recipe! I think these are more like muffin tops than cookies. No matter what you call them they're pretty yummy.

My tweaks:
I used regular carrots instead of baby carrots
I used 1T pumpkin pie spice instead of nutmeg
I added 1/4 tsp stevia extract

Meal idea: broiled pesto shrimp

2009-05-21T21:37:00.004-04:00

This post is more of a meal idea than an actual recipe. It's really quick to put together and have a dinner in minutes! The basic premise is to thaw out some frozen raw shrimp, toss them in pesto, and broil them for 3 minutes (or until they turn pink). That's it! You're done! For pesto, I usually just throw whatever herb we have that looks good into a food processor along with whatever nuts I have. Tonight I had a big bunch of parsley, so I threw that in there with a handful of walnuts and a few green onions for bite, lemon zest and juice and a pinch of red pepper flakes for kick, and extra virgin olive oil to thin it to the right consistency. If you really like pesto, you can make a lot at once and freeze it in an ice cube tray, then pop the cubes out and store in a baggie - this way you can grab both the shrimp and the pesto from the freezer at the same time and make this even more of a convenience meal.

I had some extra pesto tonight so I chopped up some zucchini and yellow summer squash, tossed them in the extra pesto, and broiled them too. We also had a fennel salad on the side. Just thinly slice a fennel bulb and dress with extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice. You can add some minced parsley, fennel fronds, or lemon zest if you want to get a little bit fancy.

Jamaican Ribs

2009-05-19T19:18:00.003-04:00

I really like ribs, but I hardly ever eat them since they're almost always covered in some kind of sweet sugary sauce. They intimidated me for some reason, so I never considered cooking some myself - they just seemed like they required a lot of equipment I don't have, like a grill or a smoker. Well I finally got over my fear of cooking healthy sugarless ribs at home with the following recipe. It uses a Jamaican inspired marinade followed by slow oven cooking to produce some nice tender ribs with a pleasing herby crust. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did!

serves 2

ingredients:
1.5 lbs pork baby back ribs
1 T dried thyme
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground or crushed coriander
1/2 cup water
2 T extra virgin olive oil

Combine all the ingredients in a plastic bag and marinate for at least 1 hour, but 3 hours is better. Preheat the oven to 290 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with foil and lightly oil it with some extra olive oil. Lay the ribs on the baking sheet and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 2 hours. Remove from the oven and drain any liquid. Heat up the broiler. Broil ribs meaty side up for 5 minutes to crisp up.

You can double this easily and make some tasty leftovers. I had some leftovers for lunch the next day and they were great.

Recipe is adapted from Eating Stella Style by George Stella.

This recipe is part of the Natural Cures Healthy Recipe Blog Carnival over at Hartke is Online!

Lemon Curd Bars, Gary Taubes, and the Liberation Diet

2009-05-16T17:44:00.005-04:00

I had a lot of foodie fun this weekend. This morning I had the pleasure of seeing Gary Taubes give a lecture on his book Good Calories Bad Calories and even got to meet him for a minute afterwards and get my book signed and a quick answer to a question. I asked him if he ever thought low-carb had a prayer of gaining mainstream acceptance and he said that if anything he foresees a cognitively dissonant compromise - that carbs are bad but that fat (especially saturated fat) is also bad.

Gary Taubes speaking.

After the Taubes breakfast my sister and I headed off to another lecture given by a book author, The Liberation Diet. by Kevin Brown. He was a pretty engaging speaker and spoke out very strongly against all forms of modern industrialized food. I spoke with him a little before and after his presentation and I may have an opportunity to work with some of his clients by helping them change their diets by coming to their homes and cooking for them! I'm pretty excited by this idea and I hope it pans out.

The Liberation Diet meeting was a potluck and the dish I brought was these Lemon Curd Bars which I found over at The Nourishing Gourmet. If you use coconut oil instead of butter, these bars make a great occasional primal treat. I would have a picture for you but the pan got devoured pretty quickly; rest assured they looked exactly like the original and tasted amazing! The lemon curd is simple, just five ingredients, but beyond delicious. Even if you don't make the nut bars to go underneath, the curd is really something special.

Grain Free Almond Crackers

2009-04-28T20:19:00.004-04:00

Sometimes you just want something crunchy, or you want something to spread your favorite dip on rather than just eat it with a spoon. This is one of the banes of low carb/paleo existence. Luckily, it's dead easy to whip up some almond crackers to satisfy on both counts! You can enjoy them as is or use them as vehicles for other tasty food such as guacamole or pate. You could even make them into dessert by adding some cinnamon or pie spice to the dough and perhaps a touch of honey or maple syrup.

GRAIN FREE ALMOND CRACKERS

ingredients:
1 cup almond flour
1 egg white
1 pinch salt

(that's it!)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a bowl, mix together the almond flour, egg white, and salt until it forms a paste.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Make sure you use parchment paper, because if you don't you'll end up chipping your crackers out of the pan. Place the dough in the middle and top with another piece of parchment paper. Using a rolling pin (or any other cylindrical instrument), roll out the dough as thin as you can get it. Try to make it take up the whole cookie sheet if you can. Super thin. I mean it!

Peel off the top layer of paper and score the dough with a knife into whatever size crackers you want. Bake in the 325 oven for 10 minutes and then check on the crackers. You are looking for them to color ever so slightly. A little color means crispy, but a lot of color means burned nut taste, which is no good. If the edges have started to color nicely, remove them to a plate and put the remaining crackers back in the oven. Keep doing this, checking every 5 minutes and removing the golden crackers, until finally they are all baked to perfection.

Cool completely and store in an airtight container.

You can make many variations on thee crackers by adding in different seasonings to the dough base. Go nuts! (hur hur)

Chicken and Kale Sofrito (aka kale con pollo)

2009-04-26T19:53:00.007-04:00

Ok, I know it's not much of an excuse, but I haven't been posting because I lost my camera. Again. I visited my family and left my camera in the back of my mom's car. I just don't like doing blog posts without pictures! They're the best part!

I've also been experimenting with a very high fat/very moderate protein diet (The Optimal Diet by Dr. Jan Kwasniewski, aka "Polish Atkins") and I've been eating dairy for the past two weeks, so you probably didn't want to hear about what I was eating anyway. ;) I think my experiment with that is over...I did lose a pound or two, but I forgot how oogy dairy makes me feel.

Anyway, here is a nice dinner you can make. The recipe is just a loose guideline; this is really a dish you just want to feel out.

CHICKEN AND KALE SOFRITO (aka kale con pollo)

I love watching Daisy Martinez's cooking show on PBS, and I kind of made this up based on general principles from her style of Puerto Rican cooking.

First of all, you have to make Daisy's sofrito and her achiote oil, which you can find here http://www.daisycooks.com/pages/recipes_detail.cfm?ID=1 and here http://www.daisycooks.com/pages/recipes_detail.cfm?ID=2 Sofrito is a wonderful fresh sauce/condiment made out of onions, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, etc. The recipe makes a ton, but it freezes well. Achiote oil is just extra virgin olive oil gently warmed with annatto seeds until it becomes a deep amber color and picks up the flavor of the seeds.

Puerto Rican cooking would traditionally use rice as the base for this dish (arroz con pollo), but since this is paleo we're talking about here, I used a base of shredded kale instead. I just used one bunch of dino kale cut very finely.

So here are the ingredients for two people:
4 T achiote oil, divided
1 lb chicken drumsticks
salt and pepper
1/2 cup sofrito
jarred olive salad (mixed olives with roasted peppers, seasonings, etc)
jarred capers
one bunch of kale, shredded

Heat 2 T achiote oil, salt and pepper the chicken, and brown well on all sides. Remove the chicken from the pan.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the sofrito to the pan, deglazing with the juices. Add the remaining 2 T achiote oil and let the liquid cook off until the sofrito starts to sizzle. Add in some olive salad and capers to taste and a little of the olive salad liquid. Add the kale to the pan and stir to coat.

Nestle the chicken on top of the kale, put a lid on the pan, lower the heat, and cook for 10 minutes. In the last 5 minutes of cooking, heat the broiler up. Once the chicken and kale has steamed for 10 minutes, put the whole pan under the broiler for 4-5 minutes to crisp the skin up.

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My husband declared this the best chicken I've ever made. Hopefully it has inspired you to make something delicious with sofrito as well!

Bacon Mayonnaise!

2009-04-10T18:00:00.003-04:00

I had been threatening to do it for weeks, and I finally did it. I took my leftover bacon grease and turned it into mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise, but I hardly ever eat it anymore because it's impossible to find a commercial brand that isn't made with a bad vegetable oil. I don't like homemade mayo made with extra virgin olive oil as it tastes far too strong. Light olive oil makes a palatable mayo, but light olive oil has undergone some pretty severe processing, making it not ideal either. Enter the bacon fat!

I didn't bother to strain my drippings which is why my mayonnaise is speckled, but the taste is still outrageously good. :) I'm not going to try to tell you how to make this stuff, because it's pretty finicky, so I'll direct you to the original recipe I used, which you can find here: http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/introducing-a-recipe-contest-with-prizes/ The original comes from a book called simply "Fat" by Jennifer McLagan.

I had to go through some calisthenics to get mine to turn out. I started it in a food processor, but there was so little volume from one egg yolk that it wouldn't reach the blades. So I had to scrape everything into a blender. Then I had to add another egg yolk to get a good emulsion going. Then I had to add more lemon juice to cut through the extreme savoriness of the bacon. The end product is delightful though. :) I think I'm going to make chicken salad with it.

Taco Salad and Homemade Taco Seasoning

2009-04-08T19:23:00.004-04:00

Taco night is one of my favorite nights. :) I love setting out all the different fixins in their little bowls and letting everyone go down the line and construct their own. Since I have yet to find a paleo version of a tortilla, I usually just do taco salad now. Big bed of lettuce, big scoop of taco meat, and then pile on the condiments. Cheese, sour cream and refried beans are out, so instead I set out things like guacamole, chopped tomatoes, chopped scallions, salsa, hot sauce, lime wedges, chopped cilantro, olives, even crumbled bacon (is there anything that doesn't go with bacon?).

The most problematic element in this equation is the taco meat. Those little premade packets of taco seasoning that you can get at the store are full of fillers and salt. Luckily, it's dead easy to make your own.

TACO SEASONING

ingredients:
2 T chili powder
1-1/2 T cumin
1-1/2 T paprika
1 T onion powder
1 T garlic powder
2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Just put everything in a container and shake to combine! To make taco meat, mix 3 T of the mixture with 1 lb of ground meat and salt to taste. Just brown the meat, add the seasonings and 1/4 cup of water, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Recipe is adapted from 500 Low Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender.

Strawberry Vinaigrette

2009-04-06T11:53:00.004-04:00

Drive-by posting today. I had a very busy, yet fun, weekend getting together with my old high school crew who I hadn't seen in years. Getting back on track this week starting out with this interesting Strawberry Vinaigrette salad dressing I made today. It's so good it's making me look forward to salad this week!

I don't know if the picture does it justice, but it is super thick and creamy and it's a vivid pink color. I found the recipe here: http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/soupsandsalads/r/strawberryvinag.htm

Lamb Kabobs with Paleo Mint Pesto

2009-03-31T16:10:00.004-04:00

Lamb and mint are a natural pairing and they go together perfectly in this dish. This was one of those dinners where you're sad when it's over because you're not still eating it!

LAMB KABOBS WITH PALEO MINT PESTO
serves 2 people for dinner with 1 portion leftover for lunch :)

ingredients:
~1.5 lbs lamb stew meat or boneless leg of lamb cut into chunks
any mix of your favorite kabob vegetables - I used chunks of zucchini and yellow squash, but tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, etc would all be good too

1 bunch of fresh mint (about 1.5 cups)
1 big handful of fresh parsley (about 1 cup)
juice of half a lemon
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of red pepper flakes

In a food processor or blender, combine mint, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes and turn into a coarse puree

Combine the pesto with the lamb and vegetables and leave to marinate 2 hours or overnight.

Preheat your broiler. Line a large baking sheet with foil. Drain the lamb and vegetables (reserving the marinade), place on the baking sheet, and broil 7-10 minutes or until desired doneness.

Recipe is heavily adapted from "5 Square Low Carb Meals" by Monica Lynn.

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In the old days I would have eaten this with rice, so instead I made up some cauliflower rice to act as a bed for all the delicious juices.

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CAULIFLOWER RICE
serves 2

ingredients:
1/2 head of cauliflower, grated
reserved pesto marinade
1/4 cup chicken stock
extra virgin olive oil

Heat 1-2 T of olive oil in a large pan and start to saute the grated cauliflower over medium heat. After the pan has gotten nice and hot, add the reserved pesto and the chicken stock. Continue sauteing, stirring, until the cauliflower is al dente. Don't cook it too long or it will turn to mush. I estimate this takes 5-7 minutes, but just taste it as you go and pull it off the heat when it's done.

Tahini Mustard Salad Dressing

2009-03-30T21:29:00.004-04:00

I pack my husband's lunch every day, and about 99% of the time it includes a salad. Usually I just throw together some extra virgin olive oil with whatever vinegar looks good, but sometimes I like to change it up a little. This tahini mustard dressing is one of his favorites. It's super thick and creamy, but 100% dairy-free! The dressing is very versatile too. As well as using it for dressing salad greens, it's great as a substitute for mayonnaise in chicken/tuna salad or cole slaw. It's also delicious as a marinade for grilled or broiled chicken. It will keep for at least a week in the fridge, but it never lasts that long around here.

ingredients:
1/2 cup tahini
3/4 cup water
1/2-3/4 tsp sea salt
3 T apple cider vinegar or 1/4 cup lemon juice
2 T prepared mustard, any kind
2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder

Just dump everything in a food processor and let it rip for a few seconds to combine. It will be very runny initially, but it will firm up significantly in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from The Garden of Eating by Rachel Albert-Matesz.

Rendering Lard

2009-03-21T18:25:00.004-04:00

As time goes on I have been pondering more and more the role of vegetable fats in paleo/primal eating. The only vegetable oils I use are extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, and to a much lesser extent palm oil, but I use them a lot - especially the olive oil. I cook just about everything in it and I also pour it all over my salads and steamed veggies. Before paleo I used to joke there was butter in my veins - now I joke they run with olive oil! Is this a good thing though? Olive oil is far more processed than animal fat and has a far different fatty acid profile. I have a hard time imagining vegetable fats being a big part of our ancestor's diets unless they happened to be lucky enough to live in the land of coconuts. Anyway, I'm not about to give up olive oil for salads, but for general cooking purposes I've been considering making the switch to animal fat.

I joined the Polyface Farm buying club recently and I was excited to see that they had pig fat for sale for $1/lb. Perfect for making lard! I thought I read it came in 5-lb bags so I placed an order for one. Well, when it was delivered, I ended up with a 14.5 bag of fat! Turns out they come in approximately 10-lb bags (not 5-lb) and the one I happened to get was a little overfilled. Folks, this is a lot of pig fat.

My package of fat taking up half the sink!

My sister (who you may remember from her guest post) came to visit me this weekend and we decided to have ourselves a lard rendering party. Fourteen and a half pounds is a lot to render at once, so we let it thaw just a bit and peeled some pieces off the top to work with and put the rest back in the freezer.

First, my sister diced the fat up.

Then I took my enameled cast iron Dutch oven, put it over very low heat, and poured in about 1/4 inch of water (to prevent scorching) and started adding the diced fat. We started out with adding just one layer across the bottom, and when it started melting we added a bit more, repeating the process until finally everything was in the pot. After a little time and some stirring, the fat started rendering out and looking like this:

This bubbling pot of wonderfulness smells FANTASTIC. You can't imagine how good it smells unless you've done it yourself! We left it over very low heat, stirring occasionally, until most of the cracklings started to sink to the bottom. Once that happened (it took several hours), we poured it through a strainer into a container to cool. This stuff is pure liquid gold.

After chilling out overnight in the fridge we ended up with a container of pure white lard ready to be used in any and all cooking applications. We also have an incredible snack - the leftover cracklings!

For her help in the endeavor, my sister is going back to school with a jar of our delicious pastured pork fat lard with which to cook and scandalize her low-fat roommates. :D

Beef and Potato Stew with Saffron

2009-03-17T19:02:00.005-04:00

I haven't been posting as much as I would like. I've taken some pictures of our food lately but I haven't had time to sit down and write anything up until today. Here is something we ate tonight. It is a delicious paleo beef stew with Spanish flavors. The original recipe is "Beef and Potato Stew with Saffron from La Mancha" from the book "Real Stew" by Clifford A. Wright. I had never used cloves or saffron in a stew before, but the result was amazingly rich and delicious. I think this may be my new favorite beef stew!

serves 4-6

ingredients:
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 large green bell peppers, seeded and chopped
1 medium onion, sliced and separated into rings
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2-1/4 lbs boneless stew beef
*1-1/2 lbs potatoes, cut into 1-1/2 inch chunks
1 T sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 bay leaf
Good size pinch of saffron threads
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup beef broth, optional
water
1-2 T arrowroot powder, optional

Layer the olive oil, bell peppers, onion, garlic, and beef into a stew pot in that order. Layer the potatoes on top of the beef. Add the salt, pepper, cloves, bay leaf, and saffron. Pour the wine and beef broth over and add enough water to come to the top of the potatoes but not cover them.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer until the meat is very tender, about 2 hours.

The broth is relatively thin at this point. If you would like a thicker stew, with the pot still on the heat dissolve the arrowroot in 2 T cold water and stir into the stew.

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*note: Some people don't consider potatoes to be paleo. I find them acceptable on my personal version of the paleo diet, but if you'd rather substitute a different root vegetable I think that rutabaga would work the best.

Turkey or Pork Breakfast Sausage

2009-03-03T19:47:00.006-05:00

My husband likes sausage for breakfast, but it's hard to find pre-made breakfast sausage that isn't full of questionable additives, fillers, and/or nitrates. This breakfast sausage recipe is really easy to make and contains none of those iffy ingredients. I make up 1 or 2 pounds at a time and keep them in the fridge for up to about a week. If you want to make up even more at a time, you can freeze the patties in an airtight container separated by layers of parchment paper.

Turkey or Pork Breakfast Sausage

ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey or pork
1 tsp onion powder or 1 T onion flakes
1/4 tsp each cumin, black pepper, nutmeg, oregano, red pepper flakes, and ground ginger
1-1/2 tsp poultry seasoning (or 1/2 tsp each dried basil, thyme, and sage)
1-1/2 tsp sea salt
1 egg, lightly beaten

Mix all ingredients together and chill for at least an hour to let the flavors meld. Form it into patties and saute until nicely browned on both sides. If you use turkey you might need to grease the pan a little, but if you use pork it should produce enough of its own fat.

Recipe is adapted from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

Guest post by my lovely sister - So Many Veggies, So Little Time

2009-03-02T13:10:00.011-05:00

My little sister has been listening to me prattling on about food and nutrition for years now. She's been in college though, where it's really difficult to have the time and/or attitude to care about what you're eating or to cook properly. Now that she's getting to the end of her senior year, she decided to take the plunge into paleo about 2-3 weeks ago and she's already feeling better and losing weight. Still being a college student though, she has let me know that a lot of the recipes I post just don't work out for her because she doesn't have the time or facilities. With that in mind, she has offered to write a guest post about how to do paleo when time is a definite factor. I hope you enjoy!

Weren't we cute?

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I'm Laura... 22, *almost* a college graduate, and a lover of all things fatty.

Despite the fact that I live with two of my best friends who think bacon is the devil and whole wheat is a cureall, I have still always eaten relatively low carb. I'm not too keen on the excess dairy and lack of fruit that comes with Atkins, though. Atkins also led me to want to "cheat" because I felt like I was on a diet. My sister had been talking about this caveman diet for a couple of years, but I didn't see how I could do it myself. Cheese and low carb pasta were too ingrained in my eating habits. I read a couple of articles on Mark's Daily Apple and I started thinking that I could try cutting out wheat. Wheat first followed by dairy a few days later. Well, less than a week later and I felt better than I even knew I could! My acne has cleared up considerably and my back doesn't hurt anymore

I really enjoy cooking, but as a college student, I rarely have enough time for drawn out slow cooked meals (unless it’s in a crockpot). Another obstacle I have to overcome is living with two of my conventionally educated best friends who worry about me eating bacon, loads of olive oil, and no uber-"healthy” whole wheat. But alas, I love eating like a cavewoman. My mouth, stomach, and over all well being love it too.

I came to the realization that I don’t ever want my meals to take longer than 30 minutes to prepare. If it’s going to take longer than a half hour, I probably won’t do it. Most of my meals involve cutting up a bunch of veggies and some sort of meat (usually chicken) with some spices/herbs, both pan fried in olive oil. The combinations of vegetables are virtually endless, but one of my favorites is zucchini, yellow squash, onions, and red peppers. I usually cook the onions the longest, and put the peppers in right at the end because I don’t like the mushy texture of fully cooked peppers. I make a huge skillet full of veggies that looks like way too much for one person. It usually gets put into a serving bowl, spiced protein on top, and voila! yummy, nutritious food that I can eat while reading or in front of the TV. Another super simple meal is a can of tuna tossed with olive oil, vinegar, and salt & pepper which I throw on top of some greens and whatever vegetables I have in the fridge that haven’t been stir fried yet. Sometimes I don’t come home from doing work on campus until 11 pm and by that time I’m usually hungry again. I’ll either make 2 fried eggs in olive oil (mmm delicious protein and fat!) or I'll have a handful of nuts with some berries. My favorite nuts are walnuts and almonds, and I get frozen berries because they are cheaper and never go bad. It’s a win-win situation.

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Thanks again to my sister for the great guest post!

Arugula and Walnut Cake

2009-02-24T23:07:00.005-05:00

I was browsing Elana's Pantry the other day and came across this recipe for a spinach and pine nut cake: http://www.elanaspantry.com/cooked-veggies/community-supported-spinach-cake/ I thought it looked pretty fab so I set out to make my own using slightly different ingredients. Here is my result.

ARUGULA AND WALNUT CAKE

makes 9 squares

ingredients:
1-1/2 pounds arugula, thoroughly washed, very roughly chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 eggs, whisked
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon celtic sea salt

1. Wilt arugula in a large covered saucepan, over low heat (do not add water), until tender.
2. Drain and cool, then gently squeeze moisture out of the arugula. Really, get all the moisture out you possibly can. I think this is the most important step.
3. Place arugula in food processor and pulse until coarsely blended, then set aside.
4. In a small skillet, warm 3 tablespoons oil, add walnuts and saute until golden brown.
5. Add garlic to pan of walnuts and saute together an additional minute.
6. In a large bowl, combine walnut mixture, blended arugula, eggs, raisins and salt.
7. Spread mixture in a very thin layer into a greased 7 x 11 inch pyrex baking dish.
8. Bake at 350° for 30-40 minutes.
9. Cut into 9 squares and serve.

I was home alone when I made these and I ate half the pan by myself right away they were so good! The raisins make them very sweet, so I think if I made it again I might reduce the raisins to 1/4 or 1/3 cup. This was great as a side dish with some steak. It was also good room temperature the next day for breakfast alongside some fried eggs.

Adventures in leftovers - Paleo Chicken Croquettes

2009-02-24T13:11:00.005-05:00

I roasted a whole chicken and the hubby and I ate the breasts and wings with all the yummy crispy skin, which left us the leg quarters as leftovers. Now, I'm always stymied when it comes to leftover dark meat. I like chicken legs when they're still hot, but when you use them for leftovers in the old standards (chicken salad, fajitas, soup) they have a texture I find unappealing. I was flipping through some old cookbooks and I found a recipe for cooked chicken called chicken croquettes, which are basically meatballs made with cooked chicken meat. Perfect for my texture problems! The only problem is that traditional croquettes are held together with bechemal sauce (flour, butter, and milk/cream) and bread crumbs, and the outsides are usually breaded as well. I was undeterred and decided to come up with a paleo version. Now, I've never had a real croquette so I don't know how my version compares to the "real" one, but I thought these were pretty darn tasty. I spiced mine up with some Southwestern seasonings, but these are unnecessary to the overall dish.

Paleo Chicken Croquettes

Start these a few hours or the day before you want to eat as the mixture needs to chill in the fridge. Makes approximately 12 croquettes.

ingredients:
2 leftover chicken leg quarters, skinned and meat torn off the bones (save the bones for soup stock!)
1/2 a small onion
1/2 - 1 cup of mushrooms
2 T mayonnaise (I think really thick coconut milk would probably work as well...you know, the solid stuff that sits on top of the liquid in the can)
1 chipotle pepper canned in adobo, minced
1/2 - 1 tsp adobo seasoning (basically a mixture of salt, garlic powder, and cumin)
1 egg
olive oil

Pulse the onion and mushroom in a food processor until very finely chopped. These are standing in for your bread crumbs. Heat up a little olive oil in a skillet and gently saute the mushroom/onion mixture until it is cooked through and starting to brown.

Meanwhile, put the cooked chicken meat in the food processor and pulse until it starts to kind of look like bread crumbs. Add the mayonnaise, chipotle pepper, adobo seasoning, and egg and pulse to combine. Add the cooked onion/mushroom mixture and pulse to combine again. Scoop the chicken mixture into a container with a lid and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

When the time comes for cooking, heat some olive oil up in a skillet. Using two spoons, scoop up the chicken mixture and shape it into quenelles. Don't know what I'm talking about? Here's a link that explains how to make a quenelle: http://www.chefspencil.com/recipes/NDUy/QuenellesHowTo.aspx Why do I do it this way? Well, three reasons. The first one is that I don't have to get my hands dirty. The second is that it looks really nice. And the third is that it makes it very easy to brown the meatballs evenly on three sides. Anyway, just brown your croquettes/quenelles on all three sides and set on a paper towel lined plate to drain. Enjoy!

What I've been eating: Feb 19, 2009

2009-02-19T20:15:00.003-05:00

Once again I've been remiss in my blogging! My mom and little brother came down for a visit over President's Day weekend and they threw me completely out of my groove. That's ok, family wins out over groove any day! Anyway, the cooking has not stopped completely in the past week or so, so I'll dish out another bullet list of stuff we've been eating around here. Maybe I'll make this a regular thing!

Scotch eggs - Well, it's just me eating these. My husband wouldn't eat an egg if you paid him $20. Basically you hardboil some eggs and then encase them in raw sausage meat. Then you bake them in the oven until the sausage is cooked through. I grab two for a quick breakfast or lunch.

Shepherd's pie - Traditional shepherd's pie has a mashed potato crust. I made my crust with rutabaga and turnip and also added in some roasted garlic cloves. Yum yum. Sautee your veggies in a pan (onions, celery, carrots are good choices) and then deglaze with beef stock or red wine. Add in some ground meat and brown. Add some herbs for flavor (sage is good) arrowroot if you want a thick gravy. Top with your mashed root veggies and bake until bubbly!

Fruit crumble - As previously blogged here. This week's had blueberries, apples, and frozen strawberries. Topping was pecans, almonds, prunes, and a splash of pomegranate juice.

Pomegranate juice - As good as my eating is in other areas, I have yet to completely kick the diet soda habit. This week I finally found a drink that keeps the diet soda craving severely at bay. I fill a big glass up with water and then add maybe 1 oz of pomegranate juice. It's just enough to flavor the water but not enough to be too sugary. This drink helped me cut down from my usual one soda per day to maybe three sodas this week. Maybe soon it will be no sodas at all. :)

Pork chops and mashed celeriac - This is my favorite dinner we had recently. I coated some pork chops with grill seasoning and seared them in bacon fat. Then I made a gravy from the pan drippings with mustard, white wine, and some arrowroot to thicken. On the side we had mashed celeriac (celery root). I cubed a celeriac, boiled it until tender, and pureed it in the food processor with some roasted garlic cloves (I also used a little bit of butter, but if I wasn't going to use dairy at all I would have used more bacon grease or some olive oil). It was deeeeee-licious. The celeriac had a great texture, almost exactly like mashed potatoes but with a hint of celery flavor. We also had a side salad, but it was just filler for this meal. :)

what I've been eating

2009-02-10T22:17:00.004-05:00

I don't have any structured recipe posts for you after the flurry of last week, so I thought I'd just write about the dribs and drabs of what we've been eating lately. Hopefully it can inspire someone!

Turkey Soup: Remember the big pot of collards I made last week? Well I took the leftover cooking liquid and simmered some chopped up vegetables (2 teeny tiny potatoes, carrots, celery, and okra) until tender and then added in all the turkey meat I shredded off the wing that also had cooked with the collards. I added some parsley too. It made a really nice soup that we've been having a cup of with dinner for the past few days.

Apricot Glazed Lamb Chops: This is so easy it's almost criminal. The hardest part is going to the store and finding some apricot preserves that are made with all fruit and no sugar. Once you have your preserves in hand, mix 1/4 cup of them with 1/2 tsp ground ginger. Take enough lamb chops for two people and coat with half the preserves. Broil 5 minutes. Flip, coat with other half of preserves, and broil 5 more minutes. Ta da! Here is a picture of that dinner:

Also on the plate are a simple carrot salad (shredded carrots with parsley and olive oil vinaigrette) and some braised mustard greens with shallots, white wine, and celery.

Skirt Steak with Beer: This one isn't technically paleo, but it was pretty awesome. If you're going to be unpaleo, this is the way to do it. I marinated skirt steak for 24 hours in a mix of wheat-free soy sauce, rosemary, garlic, mustard, worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and dark lager beer (thus negating the wheat-free soy sauce but oh well). Sear it to death in a skillet so it has a nice crust but is medium rare in the center. Yum yum. I think we had it with the turkey soup and a raw fennel salad.

Pork Breakfast Sausage: I finally got around to making sausage for my husband to take to work so he's not eating all the crap that is in the breakfast meat available at his office. It's just ground pork with various seasonings that make it taste like sausage (key ingredient: sage). It's really good. I'll do a proper write-up on it soon. We've been having that for breakfast this week along with blueberries and walnuts.

Apple Fritter Things: I have these in the oven right now and I'm not sure how they're going to turn out. It's shredded apples held together with ground flax seeds and an egg and flavored with lemon zest/juice and cinnamon. You bake them first and then turn the oven heat really low to kind of dehydrate them. They're still in the oven right now. If they turn out any good I'll post the recipe this week.

Fruit Salad: Blueberries have been on sale so we're eating them a lot! I have hit upon my favorite combination of fruits for fruit salad: Pears and blueberries with cinnamon and lime juice. Heaven in a bowl! We also had cantaloupe and blueberries with lime juice and it was pretty good too. The lime juice really has an affinity for the blueberries, I think. I picked up something called "blossom water" at the store today that smells like flowers - I think it might be good on fruit salad too. Maybe rose water would also work! Hmmm...

That's it for tonight. Happy eating!

Greens Series - Day 5 - Southern Style Collards

2009-02-06T19:39:00.005-05:00

We've finally come to the end of my week of greens! I'm ending the week with a collard greens recipe that goes against every cooking instinct in my body. In general, I like to cook vegetables for a short amount of time in a shallow skillet with a minimum of liquid; these collards are cooked for a long time in a big pot of boiling water! The result is tender, smokey greens that go perfectly with Southern staples like BBQ. We had these tonight with BBQ beef brisket.

Southern Style Collards

ingredients:
3 quarts water
1.5 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 T hot sauce
1 tsp cajun or blackening seasoning
1 smoked turkey wing or drumstick or a smoked ham hock or shank
1 T olive oil or bacon grease
2 bunches of collard greens

In a stock pot, heat the water to boiling with the salt, garlic powder, black pepper, cajun seasoning, and hot sauce. Add the turkey wing, lower to a simmer, and cook for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, prepare the collards. De-rib the collards by folding the leaves in half and cutting along the rib. Stack the leaves and cut them into strips, then roughly chop them.

Add the collards to the pot along with the 1 T of olive oil or bacon grease. Simmer for a further 45-60 minutes.

To serve, scoop the greens out with a slotted spoon. You should be left with a pot full of flavorful broth called "pot likker" and a well-cooked turkey wing. You can shred the meat and save the meat and broth to make soup later. I'm eyeing up my leftovers to make a turkey and okra stew.

The original for this recipe is the work of the infamous Paula Deen: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/collard-greens-recipe/index.html

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So that's it for the Greens Series! I hope you've enjoyed it and maybe found some new recipes to try out. I've definitely been enjoying eating them all week. :)

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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Greens Series - Day 4 - Broiled Kale

2009-02-05T18:46:00.005-05:00

This is another rather unusual way to make kale. I used to make kale or collards several times a week and just braise them with a little garlic and chicken stock. I liked the greens cooked that way, but my husband got so sick of it after awhile that I had to find other ways to make them. This way is surprisingly delicious, different, and takes less than 5 minutes to cook!

Broiled Kale

ingredients:
1 bunch of kale
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt
black pepper

Preheat the broiler. Remove the ribs from the kale and roughly chop it. Line a large baking sheet with foil and spread the kale out. Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Put the kale under the broiler. Watch it the whole time! Don't take your eyes off it! When the edges just start to brown (this only takes a minute or two or three), take it out of the oven and give it a stir. Put it back under the broiler and watch it until it starts to brown again (just another minute). Take it out and serve.

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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Greens Series - Day 3 - Baby Bok Choy with Ginger

2009-02-04T18:49:00.005-05:00

Baby Bok Choy with Ginger

ingredients:
1 lb baby bok choy
1 T fresh grated ginger
1 T coconut oil
1/2 tsp sea salt (or 1 T tamari wheat-free soy sauce, but this choice is up to you; if you want the umami that soy offers without eating soy itself, you might try adding in an anchovy or a smidge of anchovy paste)

Cut 1/2 inch off the bottom of each bok choy bunch. Rinse the leaves under running water to remove grit, but don't pat dry; you need the water that is clinging to the leaves.

Heat the oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat. Add the bok choy a handful at a time as it wilts down. When all the greens are in the skillet, add the ginger and salt or soy sauce. Cover and steam for 3-4 minutes. Remove the cover and let the liquid cook off.

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The technique for this recipe came from The Garden of Eating by Don Matesz and Rachel Albert-Matesz.

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Posts in the Greens Series
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Greens Series - Day 2 - Spinach Pesto

2009-02-03T16:49:00.008-05:00

I kind of like spinach, or at least I don't hate it, but I particularly dislike how mushy it gets when you cook it. Even just barely wilting it turns it too soft for my taste. Turning it into a pesto sidesteps the whole mushiness issue and is a nice milder alternative to an all-basil pesto. You can use pesto in lots of ways; as a salad dressing (cold or warm), an alternative to mayo in chicken salad, a way to add some zest to soup, a sauce for steamed veggies. Tonight I'm making split chicken breasts and I'm rubbing the pesto underneath the chicken skin.

Spinach Pesto

ingredients:
7 oz raw baby spinach (this is the size of the salad bags of spinach at my grocery store)
1 cup of fresh basil
1/3 cup walnuts
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

Place the spinach and basil in a food processor and process down to a coarse paste. Add the walnuts, garlic, and salt and process until the walnuts disappear. Scrape down the sides if necessary. With the motor running, add the olive oil in a thin stream. Taste it and adjust the salt level.

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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Greens Series - Day 1 - Relaxed Kale Salad

2009-02-02T21:10:00.009-05:00

Welcome to my first blog series! This week I am going to focus on greens. Greens are one of the most nutritious things you can eat, packed with vitamins and minerals and even protein and fiber. Everyone knows they should probably eat more of them, but it's hard when you only know one or two ways to prepare them. That is where this series comes in. Each day this week I'm going to prepare a different recipe for various green leafy things, exploring many different varieties as well as cooking techniques.

First up we have an unusual raw kale preparation. It's called "Relaxed" Kale Salad because the action of massaging the kale with a little salt and extra virgin olive oil wilts down the tough raw kale leaves significantly and makes them tender enough to eat without cooking. The original recipe can be found here: http://freshtopia.net/vlog/?p=97 There is a video about the salad at the link that is pretty cute. I usually use regular green curly kale in this, but I also like using red curly kale, which gives it a nice color. I've never tried using lacinato (dino) kale for this, so if you give that a try let me know how it works out!

Relaxed Kale Salad

ingredients:
salad:
1 bunch of kale
1-1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tart crisp apple, such as gala or fuji
1/4 cup roughly chopped walnuts

dressing:
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1/2 T (1-1/2 tsp) raw honey
1/2 T (1-1/2 tsp) brown or Dijon mustard

Remove the stems from the kale and give it a rough chop. Put the kale in a large mixing bowl and drizzle with the olive oil and salt. Massage the kale with your hands for 5-7 minutes until it wilts down significantly and becomes tender.

I started with a bowl of kale that looked like this:

And after massaging I ended up with this:

Roughly chop the apple and walnuts and add to the greens. Whisk all the dressing ingredients together and pour over the salad. Toss to distribute. You can eat it right away, but it will also keep in the fridge for at least a day or two. The kale is more than sturdy enough to hold the dressing for that long and the flavor can even improve with time. The only thing to watch out for if you want to hold it in the fridge is that the some of the apples can become a little mealy.

I've enjoyed this salad immensely ever since I started making it two years ago. I hope you'll give it a try!

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Posts in the Greens Series:
Relaxed Kale Salad
Spinach Pesto
Baby Bok Choy with Ginger
Broiled Kale
Southern Style Collards

Guest Blog post at Go Healthy, Go Fit

2009-01-31T10:53:00.002-05:00

I'd like to invite you all over to Andrew's blog, Go Healthy, Go Fit where I've written a guest blog post. If you don't know about Andrew's site already, give it a look! It's got some great stuff! My guest piece is part of his "Healthy Blogger Recipes" series and you can find it here. I've shared two delicious recipes that haven't made their way over here to Caveman Food yet, so give them a look.

Thanks for having me there, Andrew! I'm honored!

Avocado Pudding

2009-01-27T10:51:00.005-05:00

I'll admit "avocado pudding" sounds pretty weird, but bear with me. It turns out when you puree avocado in the food processor, you wind up with a mild, smooth, creamy base that is just the texture of pudding. Adding some other flavors to the party turns it from the beginnings of guacamole into an amazingly decadent pudding. Since avocados FINALLY went on sale at my Whole Foods, I was quite excited to buy some and make this recipe again! It's great as a snack, as dessert, or even as breakfast.

Here is how we start:

1 really ripe avocado (too ripe is better than not quite ripe enough)
1 ripe banana
3 T toasted carob powder*
1/2-1 tsp raw honey, optional (not pictured)

Cut the avocado in half and scoop the halves into the food processor. Peel the banana, cut it into large chunks, and add it to the food processor too. Add the carob powder on top.

Looks appetizing huh? Anyway, process the ingredients until they start to break down and get smooth. Taste and adjust sweetness with the raw honey. Process again until the pudding is completely smooth and creamy and then scrape into a bowl.

The pudding is done! Stick a spoon in it and go to town. You can also keep it in the fridge for a few days, but it's a good idea to put a piece of plastic wrap down touching the surface so that it doesn't get a skin (just like "real" pudding). I usually get two servings out of one batch.

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*Note about carob: Carob is often marketed as a chocolate substitute, which I think does carob a pretty big disservice. As a chocolate substitute, frankly, it sucks. As a food in its own right though, I think carob has a delicious toasty flavor. I you don't like carob or if you would rather have a chocolate pudding, just replace the carob powder with cocoa powder and up the honey to 1 Tablespoon (carob is naturally sweet whereas cocoa powder isn't, so the cocoa powder needs a boost).

Blog Series?

2009-01-24T21:48:00.004-05:00

I've been toying with the idea of doing a blog series. I've been wanting to eat more greens lately, so I thought I could combine the ideas and do a week-long series where each day I would make a different greens recipe (kale, collards, etc) and blog about it for you guys. What do you think? I already have ideas for some of the dishes I would make, and, hey, who couldn't stand to add more greens to their diet? ;)

EDIT: Sounds like the greens idea is on! I will collect my thoughts and recipes this week and I'll kick off the Greens Series next Monday, Feb 2.

Primal Peach Patties

2009-01-22T12:17:00.003-05:00

I was cruising around yesterday trying to find more paleo blogs when I came upon Son of Grok. I can't believe I had never seen it before! Anyway, this recipe for Primal Peach Patties caught my eye so I decided to make them today.

Man are they good! The recipe says it makes 10 patties, but I got 13. Only 12 would fit on my baking sheet though, so I just ate the last one uncooked and it was absolutely delicious. I did add a smidge of salt to mine because I'm a salt junky.

I'm hoping to pack some of these for my husband to eat for breakfast. They seem like they would make a very nice dessert as well.

Paleo Spaghetti

2009-01-19T14:50:00.004-05:00

This is my favorite recipe for spaghetti. I usually serve the sauce over spaghetti squash, but I think it's also really good on top of steamed broccoli. Leftover sauce is yummy on or in eggs.

For a nutritional boost, lately I've been adding in 1/4 lb ground heart to any recipe that calls for 1 lb ground beef. Heart is just muscle meat, so it doesn't change the taste or texture at all. It's a great way to sneak in some organ meats.

ingredients for sauce:
1 lb ground beef
1/4 lb ground heart (optional)
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 T extra virgin olive oil
1 14 oz can diced or crushed fire roasted tomatoes
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
2 tsp dried oregano
pinch of dried rosemary, optional
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes
1 tsp sea salt

Heat the olive oil and brown the ground beef, onions, and garlic over medium heat. Add all the remaining ingredients. Bring to a bubble, partially cover and simmer on low heat for 35 minutes.

ingredients for "noodles":
1 medium spaghetti squash

Cut the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise and scoop out the seeds. Put in a microwave safe container, cover, and cook on high for 10 minutes in the microwave. Leave covered for 10 minutes. Remove squash and string with a fork.

If you don't want to use the microwave (this is one of the few things I actually microwave because it's so much easier than the alternative), I would recommend steaming over roasting for this particular dish.

Stinging Nettle Infusion

2009-01-15T19:34:00.003-05:00

This startlingly dark green infusion is made with dried stinging nettle leaves. You can harvest them wild yourself if you know what you're doing, but I order mine online from Mountain Rose Herbs. Nettles are a great source of calcium (a mineral the paleodiet is often criticized for lacking) as well as being rich in other minerals.

According to the herbalist Susun Weed:
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) builds energy, strengthens the adrenals, and is said to restore youthful flexibility to blood vessels. A cup of nettle infusion contains 500 milligrams of calcium plus generous amounts of bone-building magnesium, potassium, silicon, boron, and zinc. It is also an excellent source of vitamins A, D, E, and K. For flexible bones, a healthy heart, thick hair, beautiful skin, and lots of energy, make friends with sister stinging nettle. It may make you feel so good you'll jump up and exercise.

To make the infusion, you'll need:

ingredients:
1 cup (1 oz by weight) dried stinging nettle leaves
1 quart water

Bring the water to a boil. Pour over the leaves and let infuse for 4-10 hours or overnight. Strain into a quart sized container and store in the refrigerator. The infusion will keep for a few days. If it spoils, use it as a hair rinse or use it to water your plants.

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I just started making nettle infusion for myself and my husband, but I'm hoping it will help boost our mineral levels as well as giving us more energy. It tastes very "green" but it's actually quite pleasant once you take a few sips.

I'm back! oh, and an awesome roast beef recipe

2009-01-14T16:42:00.006-05:00

Well I was away from the blog for quite a bit longer than I expected! Things just kept stacking up...the holidays, I lost my camera (found it, finally), and some family drama followed by a rousing bout of the flu.

But you guys don't care about that stuff, you're here for the recipes! So without further ado, I present you with the perfect roast beef:

ingredients:
a beef roast - I used top round, but I've read that top sirloin is even better - size is not an issue because this recipe is based on temperatures instead of times
salt
pepper
1 T olive oil, coconut oil, lard, or bacon grease, etc etc
a meat thermometer

If your roast isn't already tied, use some butcher twine and tie that sucker up (here are some instructions). This promotes even browning and even roasting.

Preheat the oven to 250 Fahrenheit. Heat your fat in an oven safe Dutch oven over medium high heat. Salt and pepper your roast and sear it in the Dutch oven, about 2 minutes a side.

Once seared, insert the meat thermometer into the thickest part of the meat and put the Dutch oven, uncovered, into the oven. Once the meat reaches 110 degrees, crank the heat to 500. At this point, you're looking for your meat to be 120 degrees for rare or 125 for medium rare.

Once it reaches the magic temperature, whisk it out of the oven and put it on a board to cool. Cover it with a foil tent and let it rest for 20 minutes. Remove the butcher's twine. Cut the roast into thin slices (I use an electric knife, but a sharp serrated one will do).

You can eat it right away or pack it up to eat throughout the week for quick breakfasts and lunches. I like to eat mine with little hot pickled peppers. Mayo is good too, but it's really hard to find/make mayo with acceptable ingredients.

The technique for this roast was found in "The Best Meat Recipes" from the editors of Cook's Illustrated (the America's Test Kitchen people).

Ham Hock and Cabbage Soup

2008-11-12T13:06:00.003-05:00

With the weather cooling down, it's nice to warm your innards with some delicious fall soup.

6-8 small servings or 3-4 large servings

ingredients:
* 4 tablespoons bacon grease
* 1 nitrate-free ham hock (about 1 pound)
* 1/2 a large onion, chopped
* 3 celery stalks, chopped
* 1/2 a small-to-medium head of green cabbage, chopped
* 3 cloves garlic, minced
* 2 bay leaves
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
* 3-4 cups Chicken Broth
* 3-4 cups peeled and cubed pumpkin (or other winter squash)

Heat the bacon grease over medium-high heat. Add the celery and onions and cook til they start to wilt. Add the ham hock.

Add the cabbage, garlic, bay leaves, black pepper, salt, and cayenne. Stir and cook until cabbage is slightly wilted, 3-4 minutes.

Pour the broth in, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes.

Add the pumpkin, cover, and simmer 1 hour.

Remove the ham hock from the pot and remove the meat from the bone. Shred the meat and stir it back into the soup. Remove and discard the bay leaves.

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This makes great leftovers and I think the taste even improves with age.

Goes well with a side salad for dinner.

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I adapted this recipe from Emeril Lagasse's Ham Hock and Cabbage Soup: http://www.emerils.com/recipe/2775/Ham-Hock-and-Cabbage-Soup

Mostly Paleo Muffins

2008-11-09T16:47:00.003-05:00

I say these are only mostly paleo because they do use baking powder/soda and flavoring extracts, which I doubt our cavemen buddies had access to. They are very tasty however, and and make a nice breakfast alternative to eggs or leftovers. I don't make them all the time, because let's face it, a muffin is a muffin! So eat these with care. I was procrastinating on writing this post because I have not felt the urge to eat pans of muffins myself, but I decided to just go ahead and write it anyway and try to find some old pictures to show you.

Note: I use maple syrup or raw honey as my sweeteners of choice. I do not use agave nectar because it can be up to 90% fructose; fructose is processed in the liver instead of the bloodstream and has many deleterious effects.

recipe makes 6 muffins

PUMPKIN CRANBERRY MUFFINS:
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1 1/2 cups almond flour
3/4 cup pureed pumpkin (you can used canned, but make sure to get just plain pumpkin and not pumpkin pie filling)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
1/4-1/3 cup maple syrup or honey depending on your sweet tooth
1 1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped cranberries

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together all the ingredients except for the cranberries until smooth. Fold in the cranberries.

Spoon batter into 6 greased muffin cups (I use coconut oil) and bake for 20-25 minutes.

These are very soft and cakey muffins. I think that cutting them in half and toasting them is very nice since it gives it little crisp edges.

Variations:
Banana nut muffins - use pureed bananas in place of the pumpkin, chopped walnuts in place of cranberries, and omit the pie spice.
Flax muffins - replace up to 1/2 cup of the almond flour with ground flax seeds

Recipe adapted from Eating Stella Style by George Stella.

*~*~*~*~*

recipe makes 6 muffins

COCONUT MUFFINS:
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1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/4-1/3 cup maple syrup or honey depending on your sweet tooth
1 1/2 tsp coconut extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
2 T coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix together all ingredients until smooth.

Pour into 6 muffin cups greased with coconut oil and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Recipe adapted from Eating Stella Style by George Stella.

*~*~*~*~*

recipe makes 12 muffins

LEMON POUND CAKE MUFFINS:
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I don't have a picture for these. This is an experimental recipe. The original recipe is from a low-carb book and uses butter and Splenda. I am 99% certain that you can subsitute paleo ingredients and end up with a tasty product, but I have only tried the original version and haven't made the paleo version yet. If anyone wants to try making these, let us know how they turn out!

2 cups almond flour
stevia to equal the sweetness of 1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
scant 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup coconut oil (original recipe is 1 cup butter)
1/3 cup maple syrup or honey (original recipe is 2/3 cup Splenda)
2 T lemon zest, or about 2 medium lemons' worth
1 tsp lemon juice
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350.

Whisk together almond flour, stevia, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Meanwhile, melt the coconut oil.

In a food processor, process maple syrup or honey with the lemon zest until combined. Add lemon juice, eggs, and vanilla. Process until combined.

With the food processor running, add the melted coconut oil in a steady stream. This should take at least 20 seconds.

Transfer mixture to a large bowl and gradually stir almond flour mixture into the wet mixture.

Grease 12 muffin cups with coconut oil and distribute batter equally among the cups.

Bake 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 325 and continue baking til done, keeping an eye on it, about 20-25 minutes. The time can vary a lot so be sure to keep an eye on it and don't let it burn.

Recipe adapted from 500 More Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpender.

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Happy eating!

Plans for November at Caveman Food

2008-11-07T13:20:00.004-05:00

I just wanted to say hi to anybody that made it over here from Cindy's blog! Thanks for the shout-out, Cindy. :) I have some plans for this month to post about yummy paleo food that you can make for the holidays that is good enough that everyone will eat. I'll also try to post about those muffins everyone seems to want to know about. The problem with the muffins is that if I want to take pictures of them for you guys I have to make them! And then I have to eat them! Such a hard life.

Anyway, stay tuned!

Butternut Souffle

2008-11-07T13:07:00.003-05:00

Sorry I've been a little MIA! My husband and I went on a mini vacation to the mountains in Asheville, NC to get away from work for a little while and enjoy fall in the mountains. Asheville was a real treat, too. They are very big into local organic food there and almost every restaurant we went to proudly touted the menu items made from local ingredients. My kind of city!

Anyway I'm back in the kitchen now. I gotta say it was nice not having to cook and do dishes for a week. :) Here is something I made today from leftovers that turned out exceedingly well.

BUTTERNUT SOUFFLE
serves 2-3 as a side dish

approx 1 cup of butternut squash puree (canned is fine)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp mustard powder
1 tsp paprika
2 T coconut milk
handful of chopped pecans

Beat together all the ingredients except for the pecans. Spread into a small greased baking dish or ramekin. Sprinkle the nuts on top. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.

This would work great as a side dish for dinner, but I was a little piggy and ate the whole thing for lunch today.

Paleo Meat Loaf

2008-10-18T20:02:00.003-04:00

So this isn't really a recipe post. It's more of an idea of how to take some of your old comfort foods and paleo-fy them. :) For the meatloaf, the two bad ingredients that are in there are usually bread crumbs and ketchup. It's not great to just leave the breadcrumbs out because it really changes the texture of meatloaf for the worse. So what I do is substitute minced mushrooms, onions, and garlic for the breadcrumbs. Sautee them a little first to lose the raw onion taste. To get a nice sweet tomato topping without using ketchup, what I do is to take one can of fire roasted crushed tomatoes, add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste, and simmer it on the stove until it thickens up. Then I smear that all over the top and sides just the way you would normally do with ketchup. All of the yum and none of the bad. :)

The mashed potatoes are actually half potato and half turnip. Rutabaga also works well. This way you get the potato taste, but with fewer empty carbohydrates and more nutrition. Instead of butter and cream, try some olive oil and a splash of chicken stock. Even better is if the chicken stock is homemade since the gelatin will make it especially smooth and delicious.

We had greens on the side as well, as you can see. Almost any green is great if you braise it with olive oil, garlic, and chicken stock.

Almond Crusted Chicken Fingers

2008-10-16T19:38:00.003-04:00

Sometimes you just want some nasty old fried chicken fingers, but as a rule they are flour-coated transfat-laden monstrosities. How to enjoy the crunch without all the badness? Almond flour!

serves 2

ingredients:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into fingers
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1.5 tsp poultry seasoning
1 tsp dry mustard powder
1/4 - 1/3 cup oil for frying (I used palm oil shortening, but I wouldn't hesitate to use olive oil or coconut oil either - or lard if I had it!)

Heat the oil a large pan over medium-high heat (but closer to medium than to high - you don't want the almond flour to burn).

Put the beaten egg in one bowl and the almond flour plus seasonings into another bowl. Dip each chicken finger in egg, then in the almond flour mixture.

Cook the chicken in two batches until it is golden on each side.

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Notes:

I've only ever made this fresh for dinner so I don't know if it would keep well for lunches or not. I suspect it might get a little gummy.

Crushed pork rinds also make a decent bread crumb substitute but they get soggy very quickly after cooking so you must eat them immediately. Also, some people are kind of squicked by pork rinds.

These chicken fingers are great for dipping too. Good options are ketchup or flavored mayonnaise. If you want to get super fancy, you can make something like date mustard, but I don't make this all the time because, even though it is amazingly delicious, it's also quite carb heavy. I might do a proper post on date mustard sometime, but here is the quick and dirty version:

happy shiny bonus date mustard recipe!
1/2 cup dates with pits removed, 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1 tsp salt, and 2 T prepared mustard; put all the ingredients in a blender and let it rip until it's smooth; pour into a small saucepan and simmer gently for 10 minutes; serve warm or cold. I got this fantastic condiment from a cookbook called The Philosopher's Kitchen.

"Sam I Am" Eggs

2008-10-09T19:31:00.004-04:00

Ok, so I can't take credit for these amazing scrambled eggs at all! I found the recipe here at the lowcarb friends messageboard.

They are an amazing bright green color and taste great. Use the proportions of 1/2 cup raw spinach and 1 T coconut milk to 1 egg. Put all the ingredients in a blender or magic bullet and puree. Then just scramble like normal in whatever your preferred cooking fat is.

Green Chicken

2008-10-07T22:18:00.003-04:00

This is a staple for lunch around here. I'll make several days' worth at one time, slice it, and keep it in the fridge to toss on top of big lunchtime salads. It's easy and delicious! I can kind of tell you how to make it, but I don't have an exact recipe. It only takes about 15 minutes from start to finish.

ingredients:
boneless skinless chicken breast
extra virgin olive oil
salt-free herbal seasoning blend (I use "all purpose seasoning" from the Simply Organic line of spices, but any mix will work)
pinch of sea salt

Heat the broiler, line a baking sheet with foil, and position a rack over the pan.

Remove the tenders from the breasts and thinly slice them. You can slice the breasts into 2 or 3 slices depending on how thin you like them.

Take a small bowl and glug some olive oil into it. Add a pinch of salt and enough dried herbs to make a thick paste. Drag the breast slices and tenders through the herb paste and coat both sides.

Place the chicken on the rack and broil for 8 minutes on one side. It will cook completely through and the side facing up with get a crust.

Remove from oven, let cool, slice, and store.

Braised Peppercorn Beef Shank

2008-09-30T18:59:00.005-04:00

Wow guys, thanks for all the feedback lately! I had no idea the saltimbocca would be such a hit. :) I hope some of you tried it out and found it as delicious as we did.

Today I have one of my favorite, no-fail, comfort food recipes. It's a slow cooked crosscut beef shank. I do most of my meat shopping at Whole Foods and they don't always have these shanks, so when they do I tend to stock up and buy 3-4 of them. I might buy even more if I actually had space for a big freezer. They usually weigh in at about 1.5 lbs a piece and they have a nice fat marrow bone in the middle of them. If you can't get a beef shank, I'm pretty sure any beef cut suitable for braising would work using this technique.

serves 2

ingredients:
1-1.5 lb crosscut beef shank with bone
1-2 T crushed black pepper
generous pinch of sea salt
4-5 peeled garlic cloves
4-5 rosemary sprigs
1/2 bottle dry red wine (I usually use an ~$8-10 cabernet sauvignon)

Preheat the oven to 225.

Place the shank in a casserole dish that is just large enough to hold it. Scatter the garlic and rosemary over it, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour in the red wine.

Cover the casserole and stick it in the oven for 7-10 hours.

That's it! When you pull it out of the oven, it will fall apart at the slightest touch of a fork. Just shred it all together, mash the garlic cloves and bone marrow into it, and serve it with a slotted spoon so that it's not swimming.

I like to serve it with a green veggie and a squash. Tonight it was steamed green beans (eep! not entirely paleo I know) and roasted buttercup squash. This was the first time we've had buttercup squash and it was delicious. It's really substantial, almost like a potato, and has a lovely sweetness.

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Idea for this recipe came from here: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/453908

Chicken Saltimbocca and Braised Escarole

2008-09-16T22:15:00.003-04:00

serves 2

Chicken:
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
fresh sage leaves
1/4 lb thinly sliced prosciutto ham
olive oil

for pan sauce:
1/3 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tsp arrowroot dissolved in 1 tsp cold water

Take your chicken breasts and slice them as thinly as you possibly can. If you can't slice them thin enough by hand or if your knife is not sharp enough, then just slice them as thin as they'll go and then pound them to 1/4 inch thickness or less. I got 4-5 thin slices out of each breast.

Lay your chicken pieces out and top each slice with several whole fresh sage leaves. Place a slice of prosciutto on top of each piece of chicken and pat it down so it adheres to the chicken.

Heat olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. You want the pan pretty hot so that it will brown the meat without overcooking it (since it's so thin). Cook the chicken in batches, starting prosciutto side UP first. This will let the chicken contract a little without the prosciutto shrinking. Flip the chicken and let the prosciutto side cook until it looks crispy. Remove to a plate and finish up the rest of the chicken in the same manner, adding more olive oil to the pan if necessary.

Once all the chicken is done, add the white wine and chicken broth to the pan and deglaze by scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Once the liquid has reduced a little, stir in the arrowroot/cold water slurry and stir quickly to thicken. Serve the sauce over the chicken.

Escarole:
1/2 head of escarole, chopped and washed
2 T raisins
1/4 cup pine nuts
pinch of sea salt
1/3 cup white wine or chicken broth
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic

Heat a glug of oil over medium heat and add the whole garlic cloves. Once the garlic starts sizzling, add the escarole, raisins, pine nuts, salt, and liquid. Cover the pan, reduce the heat, and braise for 10 minutes. Remove the cover and let the liquid cook off. This results in plump raisins, but the pine nuts get kind of plump and soft too. If that's not to your taste, you can leave the pine nuts out and toast them in a skillet or toaster oven and then add them to the dish at the last minute.

Pan Roasted Cauliflower with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

2008-09-15T19:54:00.003-04:00

serves 2

Cauliflower:
1/2 head of cauliflower broken up into medium sized florets
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and slightly smooshed
4 T (1/4 cup) extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste

You want to use a not nonstick pan for this in order to achieve the proper level of roastiness. :)

Heat the oil and garlic in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Once the oil gets good and hot and the garlic starts sizzling, add the cauliflower in a single layer. Let it go without stirring for longer than you think you should. Peek under a floret and if it is nicely browned use a spatula to flip the florets and get a different side roasty. Once again, let it go until the other side is nice and brown. At this point, turn the heat to low, salt the cauliflower to your taste, cover the pan, and let it steam itself for 10 minutes. Voila! Perfectly tender, roasty cauliflower with the bonus of a few little roasty garlic cloves. Mmm.

This cauliflower goes perfectly with roasted red pepper sauce.

Roasted Red Pepper Sauce:
1 red bell pepper
1 T white wine vinegar
1 peeled and slightly smooshed garlic clove
1.5 T extra virgin olive oil

Preheat an oven or toaster oven to 400 degrees and line a cookie sheet with foil. Bake the bell pepper until the skin starts to blacken, about 30-40 minutes. Pull the pepper out of the oven and use the foil to wrap it up into a packet. Let it sit steaming in it own residual heat for 10-15 minutes. Unwrap the pepper. The skin should be very loose and quite easy to peel off. Peel the pepper and discard all the skin and seeds.

Heat the vinegar and garlic clove in a small pan until it gets fragrant. Discard the garlic clove.

Puree the bell pepper, garlic infused vinegar, and olive oil in a food processor. You can add a little pinch of salt and some red pepper flakes or cayenne powder if you want a bit of a kick.

Keeps well for a few days in the fridge and makes enough sauce to use several times for different veggies.

Marinated Lamb and Spicy Sweet Eggplant

2008-09-07T11:44:00.009-04:00

Sorry for the hiatus. :) We got back from Alaska, but then 3 days later we left for another week and a half to go spend time with my husband's family at the beach. I'm just now getting back and getting cooking again! And let me tell you, I have missed my own food, lol. To make up for it, here's two recipes instead of one.

Again, I apologize for the crummy picture. There's no natural light in the room I take the pictures in and my flash is just awful. :(

serves 2

LAMB:
2 boneless lamb cutlets
red wine vinegar (if your version of paleo doesn't allow for vinegar, substitute a different acid such as lemon or lime juice)
extra virgin olive oil
fresh parsley
minced garlic
ground turmeric
crushed coriander seeds
sea salt

Stab the meat all over with a fork. Put it into a plastic bag along with all the other ingredients. I didn't measure anything when I did this...just eyeball it. A good glug of vinegar, two glugs of olive oil, large handful of parsley, a few cloves of garlic, a teaspoon or so of turmeric, a small palmful of coriander, and a large pinch of salt. Let this marinate in the fridge for at least an hour, and longer if you like. Preheat your broiler and then broil the lamb until it is pink in the center (I had 2 4-oz cutlets and I broiled them 5 minutes on each side). The flavors of this were really, really good. I mean really good. I can't wait to make it again good. Try it!

*****
SPICY SWEET EGGPLANT:
1 medium to large purple eggplant
1/4 cup olive oil
1 inch of gingerroot, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp hot sauce
1 tsp ground cumin
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 T of honey or agave nectar
1/4-1/2 cup water
sea salt

Slice the eggplant into thick rounds. Using the olive oil, brown the slices in two batches in a large skillet. Remove the eggplant to a plate. It will probably have soaked up all of the oil, so add about 1/4 cup water to the pan and then throw in the garlic and ginger and stir until it is fragrant. Add the cumin, hot sauce, lemon juice, and honey and stir to combine. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan and make it look saucy. Place the eggplant back into the pan, nestling them all in together. Put the heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes until the eggplant has absorbed all of the sauce. You can flip the eggplant at some point if you want, but it's not necessary. By the end of cooking they should be very very soft. Let the eggplant cool slightly and salt to taste. This dish is good both hot and at room temperature. I like it so much that the paper I have it printed on is practically see-through with all the crud I've spilled on it in the kitchen while making this delicious eggplant. :)

*****

As you can see from the picture we also had asparagus with this meal, but all I did was snap the ends off and steam it for 5 minutes. I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as my husband and I do!

vacation

2008-08-09T09:16:00.003-04:00

Thanks to everyone to left me a comment recently! I haven't had time to respond to them all, but they do mean a lot to me.

My husband and I are leaving in about 15 minutes to go to Alaska for a week, so I won't be updating or commenting while I'm gone. Maybe I'll catch myself a paleo moose while I'm up there. ;) Mmmmm, mmmmmmoose.

Have a nice August to anyone who's reading!

Coconut Chicken Curry

2008-08-06T16:58:00.005-04:00

serves 2

Coconut chicken curry over zucchini noodles. I used to do something similar using a prepackaged curry paste, but I tried making my own and it turned out even better and had no iffy ingredients. :)

curry:
3 T coconut oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch of ginger root, minced
2 T salt free curry powder
1 cinnamon stick
5 small dried red chilis
1 heaping T tomato paste
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 large carrot, thickly sliced
1/4 small head of green cabbage, chopped
1 can coconut milk
1 cup chicken broth
2 chicken breasts, cut into chunks
1 cup frozen okra*
juice of 1 lime

Heat the oil in a deep skillet and fry the onions, garlic, and ginger until soft. Add the curry, cinnamon, chilis, tomato paste, salt/pepper and saute until fragrant. Add the coconut milk, broth, carrot, and cabbage and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes to thicken. Add the chicken, okra, and 1/2 the lime juice and simmer uncovered for 10-15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings with salt/lime juice.

*Okra seems like an acquired taste, but it's one that both my husband and I love. Okra has a unique thickening property though, so if you want to make this without the okra it might turn out a little runnier.

noodles:
2 small zucchinis

Put the zucchinis through a spiralizer (or julienne them with a knife or mandoline). Put in a microwave safe container with a lid and microwave for 2 minutes. If you don't use a microwave, you can steam them for a few minutes or saute them in another skillet. You just want to soften them a little.

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I based my recipe off of this one from the Food Network: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/spicy-chicken-coconut-curry-recipe/index.html

Chicken Kabobs

2008-07-31T21:28:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the blurry picture. My flash washes things out and sometimes pics without the flash don't turn out very well. :(

So this is more of a meal idea than an actual recipe. I had some tahini sauce leftover from our lamb meatballs from last night, and I had some bland old chicken breast sitting in the fridge, so I decided to combine them. I cubed up the chicken and tossed it in a plastic bag with whatever Mediterranean-y stuff I found in the kitchen...olive oil, red wine vinegar, sea salt, oregano, onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, cumin. I didn't measure anything. I bet this would be great with just about anything you put in there. I let the chicken marinate for about 45 minutes and then I broiled it for 15 minutes. It was very good dipped into the leftover tahini sauce. For a side dish I put a zucchini through a spiralizer to make it like noodles and sauteed it in olive oil for about 10 minutes while the chicken was broiling.

Lamb Meatballs with Tahini Dipping Sauce and Cucumber Salad

2008-07-30T20:13:00.004-04:00

serves 2

lamb meatballs:
1 lb ground lamb
1 small eggplant
1 egg
1.5 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp sea salt

Cover a small baking pan with foil and roast the eggplant for 1-1.5 hours at 375 degrees, or until the eggplant is soft. Remove from the oven, peel, and mash with a fork. Set the flesh in a strainer and let the liquid drain off.

Combine the mashed eggplant, lamb, egg, oregano, and sea salt in a large bowl. It will be pretty goopy. Form mixture into meatballs. I like to use a tablespoon measure - if made with heaping tablespoons you should get about 26 meatballs.

Heat a skillet over medium heat. If you use a nonstick skillet, no fat is necessary as the lamb will render out enough. If your skillet is not nonstick, you might want to grease it. Fry the meatballs on three sides until they are nicely browned.

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tahini dipping sauce:
1/2 cup tahini
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup water
1 clove garlic
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin
handful of fresh cilantro or parsley or both

Toss everything in a food processor and let it rip til it's smooth. It's better to make this at least an hour in advance to let the flavors meld (I make the sauce after I stick the eggplant in the oven and then pull it out of the fridge at serving time).

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cucumber salad:
1/2 a large English hothouse cucumber
sea salt
red wine vinegar
extra virgin olive oil

Score the cucumber with a fork and then slice it into thin rounds.

Put the cucumber slices into a strainer or colander and sprinkle with sea salt. Put something heavy on top and let it drain while everything else cooks.

Right before serving, squeeze out all the remaining water and drizzle on some red wine vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.

Peppercorn Crusted Porkchops

2008-07-20T22:32:00.003-04:00

serves 2
4 4-oz boneless pork chops
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
bacon grease
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup chicken or vegetable stock
2 tsp Dijon mustard
pinch of arrowroot powder, optional

Heat some bacon grease in a large heavy skillet over medium high heat.

Pound the pork chops to make them thinner. Coat each side with a little bit of sea salt and a liberal amount of black pepper.

Sear the pork chops for 2 minutes on each side and remove to a plate.

Add the wine, stock, and mustard to the drippings in the pan and deglaze. Reduce slightly until the sauce starts to thicken a bit. If you want it thicker, mix a pinch of arrowroot powder with a teaspoon of cold water and then add it to the sauce. Pour the sauce over the chops.

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These chops I served with pan roasted asparagus. I just put olive oil and bacon grease in a skillet over medium high heat and let the asparagus cook while the chops were going. They got a nice little bit of char on the bottom. This meal was a definite winner! I'll definitely be adding it to the repertoire. :)

Roasted Turkey with Caramelized Vegetables

2008-06-19T18:52:00.004-04:00

serves 2

2 carrots, cut into chunks
1/2 a medium onion, sliced
1 small fennel bulb, sliced
fronds from the fennel bulb, minced
1/4 cup EVOO
2 8-oz turkey breast tenderloins
2 tsp mustard
1/2 tsp paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 425. In a large pyrex dish, toss the carrots, onions, and fennel bulb with the EVOO and a small pinch of salt. Roast for 15 min.

While it's roasting, trim the turkey if necessary. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Coat one side of each turkey breast with mustard, and sprinkle with paprika.

Take the veggies out of the oven and stir them. Push them to the sides of the dish and add the turkey to the center. Return to the oven for 15 min.

Remove from the oven and stir the veggies. Roast 15 more min.

Remove the turkey to serving plates. Stir the reserved fennel fronds into the roasted veggies. Serve veggies.

--------------

The turkey was a little dry, but the flavors were really good, especially if you ate a bite of veggies with a bite of turkey at the same time. I served this with a small green salad made with spring mix, cucumbers, and walnuts and an EVOO dressing.

* I used this recipe as a loose guide: http://www.fbnr.com/Recipes/055/4154001055.htm

Non-meat, non-egg, paleo breakfast

2008-06-17T18:25:00.003-04:00

Does such a thing exist?! Yep, and I've eaten it for the past two days.

A coconut muffin made with almond flour, dried unsweetened coconut, and agave nectar. Sliced strawberries. Earl grey tea.

I'll do a muffin post soon because I have several different recipes to share.

Stuffed Zucchini

2008-06-17T18:18:00.003-04:00

serves 2

2 large zucchinis
1 lb ground bison/buffalo (ground beef will work too, but you want a very lean meat...otherwise it will give off too much liquid and your zucchinis will be swimming)
1/2 a large onion, minced
salt and pepper to taste
dash of cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp of oregano
1 8oz can tomato sauce
1 T tomato paste (optional)
1/2 cup chopped olives or olive tapenade (I used tapenade from Trader Joe's)
1 egg
coconut oil

Cut the zucchinis in half longways. Scoop out the insides to form a large trough in each zucchini.

Heat coconut oil in a skillet and saute the onion and the scraped out zucchini insides. Caramelize it and make sure all the water cooks out. Remove the zucchini/onion mixture to a large bowl.

Add the meat to the skillet and brown, along with some salt and pepper to taste, the cayenne, and the oregano. Drain it if there's a lot of liquid after the meat is done cooking. Add the tomato sauce and paste and stir to combine.

Add the meat/tomato mixture to the bowl with the onion/zucchini mixture, along with the olives. Mix well and make sure it's slightly cool. Beat the egg and mix it in.

Mound each zucchini half with the mixture and put in a large baking dish with a little water on the bottom. Bake at 400 for 40 min. You can make the filling and stuff the zucchinis in advance and hold them covered in the fridge until it's time to bake them.

Celery-Apple Slaw

2008-04-21T18:29:00.003-04:00

This is a really nice simple side dish that goes well with any grilled meat.

All quantities are to taste:
celery, cut into matchsticks
apple, cut into matchsticks
parsley, minced
lemon juice
extra virgin olive oil
sea salt

Just toss everything together. This is also great if you add in some thinly sliced fennel bulb and then use minced fennel fronds instead of parsley.

German-ish Dinner?

2008-04-21T18:13:00.002-04:00

Tonight we had bratwurst, braised broccoli rabe, and fried apples. I fried the apples in butter, which isn't really paleo, but you can do the same thing with coconut oil or lard or something and it would turn out equally yummy. :)

Sausages cooking. I simmered them in 1/4 inch of water for about 15 min, then drained the pan and let them get a little brown.

Apples frying. Just apples and butter, nothin' else.

Broccoli rabe before and after wilting down. I minced a shallot and sauteed it in olive oil until it just barely started to turn brown, then added a bunch of broccoli rabe, about 1/2 cup chicken stock, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Covered it and let it simmer for 20 min or so.

Dinner is served! I actually only ate one of the sausages. We had some mustard with it too.

Meal Photo: Breakfast

2008-04-19T16:17:00.002-04:00

Just a photo for you. Roasted almonds, pear slices, black coffee, and braised red cabbage with two medium-boiled eggs. With a spread like this, you don't even miss all that sugary, grainy breakfast food that is usually the norm.

Veggie Hash

2008-04-17T16:00:00.002-04:00

This is a concept more than a recipe. Just throw whatever veggies you have around into a big pan with some coconut oil or meat drippings and cook until everything is tender. My particular hash has onion, red cabbage, carrot, broccoli, and a very small amount of potato. I also put some chorizo in there. Top it with some eggs and you've got a tasty meal.

Pork in Pumpkin Mole Sauce

2008-04-04T13:41:00.007-04:00

serves 3-4

note: the recipe contains cocoa powder, which is a questionably paleo ingredient - use with your own discretion

ingredients:
1 T of cinnamon powder
1 T chili powder or paprika
3 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp garlic powder or several cloves of garlic
1 14.5-oz can of pureed pumpkin
1/2 a large onion, thinly sliced
1 lb pork, chunked
2 chipotle chilis canned in adobo, minced
approx 1 cup of fresh cilantro, chopped
2 T raisins
4 T fat (lard, coconut oil, etc - whatever you have)
sea salt to taste

In a large pot or Dutch oven, combine the spices, garlic, pumpkin, onion, pork, and chipotles. Keep the pumpkin can and add about 2 cans full of water to the pot. Mix well and bring to a simmer. Taste and adjust with salt. Cook for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.

At this point you can refrigerate the mole to serve later, or you can continue.

When ready to eat, stir in cilantro, raisins, and fat and heat through for 5-10 minutes.

Serve with a green salad. Leftovers reheat well.

Recipe adapted from: http://forums.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=362685

Paleo Fruit Crumble

2008-04-04T10:54:00.008-04:00

serves 3-4

ingredients:
fruit of your choice (I used one can of apricots canned in juice and about 1/2 cup frozen raspberries)
1/2 tsp arrowroot powder, optional
1/4 cup prunes or dates
1/2 cup almond flour
1 cup walnuts or pecans
1/2 tsp cinnamon
stevia to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place your fruit of choice in an oven safe dish of the appropriate size and sprinkle with the arrowroot powder (this will make the filling more syrupy/cohesive, but is optional).

Puree the prunes or date in a food processor along with the almond flour. Add the whole nuts and cinnamon and pulse briefly to combine. Taste and adjust sweetness with stevia. The mixture should hold together when you squeeze it, but be crumbly if you rub it between your fingers; if it's too dry add a little splash of juice, if it's too wet add some more nuts.

Press the nut mixture down firmly over the fruit. Place in the oven and bake for 30 min. Let cool for 15 minutes before eating.

This refrigerates well for at least one day and is excellent reheated for breakfast.

Recipe was modified from: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost.php?p=7315732&postcount=97

Easy Breakfast

2008-04-02T14:13:00.002-04:00

Super easy breakfast. Two eggs over easy with some cantaloupe wedges. :)

Fennel Roasted Pork Loin

2008-04-02T14:06:00.003-04:00

serves 2

ingredients:

1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 large fennel bulb, thinly sliced
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 T rosemary, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T fennel seed, cracked
large pinch of salt
black pepper
1/4 cup walnut pieces, coarse ground w/mortar and pestle (or you can put them in a plastic baggie and smash them with a meat pounder or a bottle)
zest of 1/2 a lemon
1 lb pork tenderloin

heat the olive oil in a skillet
saute the onions and fennel until they get soft, about 10 min
add the rosemary, garlic, fennel seed, walnuts, salt, and pepper and cook for 5 more min
add the lemon zest and cook for 2 more min
take off the heat to cool

butterfly out the pork tenderloin so it is flat
season both sides with salt and pepper
place the fennel mixture on the tenderloin and roll it up
secure with toothpicks

heat oven to 450F and roast the tenderloin until the thermometer says it's done (30-40 min).

I based this dish very loosely around this recipe: http://www.esquire.com/features/recipes-for-men/porkshoulder

Served with the pork tenderloin are mashed acorn squash (I just put a small acorn squash in the same pan as the pork and they roasted together, then I mashed it with a fork) and steamed asparagus.

Mixed Greens Salad with Smoked Trout and Cantaloupe

2008-04-02T13:35:00.005-04:00

This is just a meal photo, not really a recipe per se. The salad is "spring mix" lettuce, celery, walnuts, and flaked smoked trout. It is dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. Side of cantaloupe wedges.

Over Easy Eggs with Fennel Cucumber Relish

2008-04-02T13:06:00.007-04:00

serves 1

ingredients:
2 eggs
1 T olive oil

1/4 of a large fennel bulb, finely diced
2 inches of cucumber, seeded and finely diced
3 kalamata olives, diced
small handful of parsley, minced
zest of 1/2 a lemon
pinch of salt
1/2 T apple cider vinegar
1 T olive oil

Combine all the relish ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Heat the 1T olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Crack the eggs directly into the skillet. Once the eggs have begun to set, carefully flip them and try not to burst the yolks. Cook for a further 30-60 seconds. Serve the relish over the eggs.

Inspiration for the fennel relish was taken from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/106594

introduction

2008-04-02T13:00:00.000-04:00

This is a blog for people who are interested in or are following a Paleolithic style diet. My focus will be on providing delicious paleo recipes to inspire people and make this diet a practical reality. :)