Yummy Chicken (or turkey) Stock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.