Cooking/Recipes, Paleo, Uncategorized

Meatloaf with hard boiled eggs in it. Yeah, that’s right. IN IT!

Today was a snowy, blowy, wintry day.  What better way to deal with the inclement weather than to make meatloaf??  And not just any meatloaf, but meatloaf with hard boiled eggs INSIDE of it.  Wow.  Tasty.

Here is the recipe.  I used 1 lb of ground beef and 1/2 a lb of ground pork.  I had no raw milk or almond milk, so I used 1/4 cup of Lactose free milk and 1/4 cup of coconut milk.  I also didn’t know how to make “homemade grilled tomato ketchup,”  so I Googled it and found this recipe.

The recipe was actually pretty easy.  The hardest thing about it was peeling the God damn hard boiled eggs.  Peeling hard boiled eggs is one of the most frustrating tasks of my 36 years.  So annoying.

Anyway, I paired the meat loaf with leftover cauliflower fried rice (a great recipe from Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals).  It was fantastic. The homemade ketchup was nice and tart, and the meat was perfectly counterpointed with the softly boiled eggs.  It was delicious, and I’ll definitely make it again.

It was good to eat a healthy supper tonight because today the sugar monster got me.  I ate not one but 2.5 cookies today, one of which vomited powdered sugar all over my keyboard, wrist pad and crotch.  Ah, good times.  Bit of advice – avoid ALL sugar.  Once you get the sweet, sweet taste of it on your tongue, you just want more and more.  It’s poisonously delicious.

And….now I want another cookie.  Blast.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Easiest Ever Paleo Banana Bread

This recipe is delicious.  If you don’t make it, you are a fool.  A FOOL!  I tried it for the first time yesterday, and the Timmy Tee was a huge fan.  He asked me to make it again this morning, so I did, because I’m nice like that.  I made a double batch, so that Tim and I could each have our own full portion.  I doubled the batch and then poured it into 2 separate bowls.  About 30 seconds into the microwaving of the first one, I realized that I forgot to add the cinnamon and salt, , so I pulled out the bowl and dusted the top of the  batter, on top of the chopped walnuts.  On the second batch, I mixed the salt, cinnamon, and nuts all into the batter.

Both batches turned out fantastic.   I ate the one with the nuts and cinnamon and salt on top.  I also put about 4 of the largest chunks of ghee you’ve ever seen on the bread directly out of the microwave, so that the bread had a nice butter glaze on it.  It was fantastic.  I ate it with like 4 slices of crispy bacon.  Tim loved his batch, with all the ingredients mixed together.  So, either way, I think you’ll like it.  It’s super quick, super tasty, and totally primal.  It’s a win, win, win!

I have to admit, I’ve totally ignored all recipes for microwaved paleo desserts in the past.  I really just don’t trust the microwave.  I’m sure it’s fine and won’t cause cancer or whatever, but it just seems…wrong.  But, I’ve changed my tune.  I’m going to try these next.  I’m a microwave convert now.

Tonight for supper I am doing Take 2 of the Chili Verde recipe I got from a friend at work.  The first time I made it, I added WAY too many hot spices.  We had to cut it with several cups of bone broth/chicken broth.  Tonight I toned down the spices, and it looks fantastic.  We are going to dive in here in a minute.  We are spooning it over sweet potatoes, and topping it with avocado chunks.

UPDATE:  The chili was delicious!!  If you want the recipe, let me know!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Sweet Sweet Potato and Poblano Pepper Soup

Found another keeper of a recipe!  Tuesday night I made Sweet Potato and Poblano Pepper Soup for supper.  I modified the recipe a little – HyVee only had 1 poblano, so Tim subbed one for an anaheim pepper.  The recipe also called for a TABLESPOON of sea salt, which seemed like a lot for the amount of soup, so I just used a teaspoon.  I also subbed 2 cups of the chicken stock for 2 cups of my homemade bone broth.  We nixed the sour cream (dairy is problematic for me) and added chunks of avocado instead (avocado makes everything better).  Also, I don’t have an immersion blender yet (I’m going to see if I can swipe one from my parents.  Mom – if you are reading this, ignore that last comment), so I had to transfer batches of the soup into our food processor, blend it up, and then pour it into a new pot.  Not only does this dirty an insane amount of dishes, but if you are not careful and you put too much liquid into the food processor and breach the center pole line (where the processor bowl connects to the base), well, then you have a messy problem.  Lots of soup all over your counter top.  After the soup was blended, we ladled it over cooked ground pork and topped it with cilantro and avocado.

Despite the blending drama, I would still make this soup again.  The flavor was very interesting.  It tasted more like potato soup than anything.  We couldn’t really taste the peppers.  Next time I think I will add more potatoes and peppers and leave the soup chunkier.  For some reason, eating a soup with pureed chunks of veggies is less filling than eating soup with non-pureed chunks.  It’s a pshychological thing.  The ground pork was very tasty in it, but this soup would be fantastic with some ham in it. I think this is a soup, though, that eats more like a 1st course and less like a meal.  It was very delicious though.

And, another side benefit, it gave Tim and I both racy dreams!  So, if you’re into interesting, vivid dreams, give this soup a shot.

Happy Cooking!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Wrangling with obstinate pork shoulder

Today I woke up at 4:50 AM, and instead of going to the gym to practice swimming (which I really should have done), I did some floor exercises at home, put away the dishes, ate breakfast, took a shower, got ready for work, and prepped 3 lbs of pork shoulder for Spiced Pork and Butternut Squash with Sage.  The prepping involved me using 3 different knives to try to cut the shoulder up into 1 inch pieces.  My right index finger is bruised and blistered due to the encounter.  I think we need some new knives or a stronger Hlo.

Anyway, I finally got the shoulder cut up and then rubbed it with the spice mixture and let it marinate all day.  I cooked it up this evening, and I have to say, the meal turned out super delicious.  It’s not an easy recipe – I dirtied 3 pans, several utensils, a cutting board, and several dishes.  But overall it was worth it.  It’s no surprise that it turned out well – the recipe called for 6 T of olive oil and 2 T of butter.  You could probably cook dirty socks in that much fat, and they would be tasty.

While supper was cooking, I made dessert – cocoa macaroons.  The recipe was very simple, and they turned out very moist and delicious.  The URL didn’t print on the recipe, so I can’t find it on the internet, but if you want the recipe, hit me up in the comments, and I’ll send it to you.  The recipe is awesome, albeit expensive.  Between the coconut and the honey (locally sourced) alone, $6 is down the drain.  For a recipe that made 10 cookies, eek!  I had the pleasant experience of actually getting egg whites to form peaks while making this recipe though.  That was exciting!  It was like magic.

So now comes the real test – horde all these delicious morsels for ourselves, or take some in to work tomorrow to convince people how delicious paleo can be??  We’ll see how my self-control pans out in the morning.  I’m supposed to swim tomorrow morning, so all of my willpower may be exhausted by the time it’s time to go to work (you only have a finite supply, you know!).

Oh, and happy valentines day, everyone.  I’m pissed because I bought 1/2 dozen chocolate-covered strawberries two days ago, and I keep leaving them at work.  They’re probably going to taste like fridge now.  🙁  Poor Teem.  He got me an awesome bottle of Jack Daniels, and I’m going to end up giving him 3-day old fridge-flavored strawberries.  SEXY!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Flounder sucks and my shoulders hurt

I made this delicious tilapia putanesca recipe for the second time last night.  The first time I made this, it was the bomb.  Super delicious.  We all loved it.  Last night I thought I would widen my realm of meat experience and give flounder a shot.  Flounder sucks. It tastes super fishy and a little mealy.  At least the flounder WE got stinks.  Maybe it was bad flounder?  Tim pointed out that the name of the fish, FLOUNDER, is pretty unappetizing in and of itself.  A floundering fish just does not sound tasty.  And it wasn’t.  Never again.

I have made 2 awesome recipes this past week though.

African-Inspired Chicken Stew – This soup was delicious.  I even remembered to sub 2 cups of my homemade bone broth for two cups of the chicken broth.  However, I did forget to add in the $9 almond butter (ridiculous), until after Tim and I had already dished up our bowls.  When I cook, I get all of the ingredients out, and then put them away as I use them. So, I look over at the counter, and the almond butter is just chilling out there, mocking me.  We dumped our bowls back into the pot and added the almond butter.  I am glad we did!  It gave the soup a delicious, nutty flavor.  Eating paleo, a lot of our food starts to taste very similar.  I use a lot of the same range of seasonings – basil, chili pepper, oregano, thyme, etc.  The flavor of this soup was very unique.  Cooking the chicken IN the soup (instead of separately) was a novel idea for me too.  I’ll definitely make this again.  When I can afford the $9 almond butter.

Crispy Carnitas – This recipe came highly recommended by a coworker, and he was spot on.  This turned out amazingly delicious.  Sure, it takes awhile to cook it, but most of that time is unattended (we even looked at a house and went to the gym while it was cooking), so the recipe is actually really easy.  I cooked it in a cast iron skillet, which worked out great and seasoned the pan with delicious pork fat.  I took an insane amount of pictures and posted them to Instagram – check out the link on the right if you are interested.  We ate it Sunday with sweet potato salad (I made the mayo with olive oil because we are out of avocado oil.  Avocado oil makes much tastier mayo, in my opinion).  Tim made guacamole Monday night, and we doused the leftover carnitas with that, and it very well could have been the best meal I have ever eaten.  A note on the guacamole – a couple of times when we’ve made this, it’s turned out, well, off.  We think it’s the onions.  Whatever you do, DO NOT mash the onions with the avocados.  Onion juice is no one’s friend.  Tim is not a huge fan of raw onions anyway, so he cut the measurement down to about 1/8 of a cup, and it turned out fantastic.

Now, on the shoulders hurting thing.  I found out about this website, Bodeefit, that will email you a body-weight workout every day for free!  You can also upgrade and get additional information from them, but for now, I’ve just been using the workouts.  Each workout will list of the movements and times, and it contains a hyperlink to a short video showing you how to do the movement.  It is really cool.  I enjoyed Crossfit for the few weeks I did it, but I don’t really like working out with people in a hot gym.  I prefer the convenience of my own home where only Tim and Lucent are staring at me, wondering what in the heck I am doing.

Well, I’ve done two workouts on back-to-back days, and I am feeling it.  The first day called for handstand pushups.  Yeah right.  I modified it using a technique I learned at Crossfit – you place your knees on the edge of a box (or in my case my bed) and do “pike pushups.”  It’s easy at first, but by later rounds, it SUCKS.  Both workouts had a lot of arm exercises and squatting exercises.  So my shoulders hurt, my ass hurts, and I jammed my thumb while doing Inch Worms.  So I’m taking a day off.  I’m reading the Primal Connection, and it reiterates the needs to GET OUTSIDE.  The weather has not been optimal, but that’s not a good excuse.  I need to get outside and get in some good, slow movement where I am actually moving through space.  I plan to make it out tonight.

Well, that’s my update for today.  Hope you have a fantastic day!!  It’s going to be light until 5:25PM tonight!  Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhuuuuaaaa!!