Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

$30 Lackluster Lamb

Tim and I visited my parents this weekend, and I got a hankering to force them to eat some more of my experimental cooking.  My parents love me, so they have to let me do this.  🙂

I ran across this Salt Roasted Lamb recipe on www.marksdailyapple.com.  I love salt, I love lamb, what couldn’t be delicious about this??  Well, the price for one thing.  I got a 2.5 leg of lamb roast on sale for $22!  Then I had to buy a box of salt, as well as a container of fresh rosemary.  Throw in some sweet potatoes, butter, and coconut milk for the side dish, and I was in about $35 just for ingredients.  But the recipe sounded delicious, so I was willing to give it a shot.

It was very easy to make, but none of my family was in love with it.  The flavor was fine but not powerful, and the meat was rather tough.  Perhaps I messed up the recipe somehow?  I’m not quite sure what happened, but I know that I won’t be making this again.  It was fun to try something new and to force Mammacita to widen her eating horizons, however.  She was a very good sport.  She liked the mashed sweet potatoes at least!  If you are into food pictures, check out my Instagram feed to the right for pics of the lamb in process.

We had at least 1/2 of the roast left over, so I sliced some this morning and sauteed it in lard with broccoli and cauliflower. It made a pretty tasty little stir fry, once the lamb was cooked crispy in lard!

I didn’t do any meal planning for this week because my schedule got out of whack with the visit to Monticello. Instead we’ll be cleaning out our freezer and seeing what we can frankenstein together.  Tim actually made supper tonight – grilled salmon (wild-caught frozen salmon from Target), with sauteed broccoli, leftover mashed sweet potatoes, and an organic lettuce salad (from the Farmer’s Market).  It was very delicious.  I would have had a very healthy night of eating had I not succumbed to weakness and bought a bag of Himalayan Salted Almonds from Target.  I trick myself into thinking these are an OK paleo treat, since they are made from dark chocolate and almonds.  But, in my heart, I know they are not good, yet I eat them by the several handfuls.  They are crazy addictive.

Once they are out of the house, I need to get myself back under control.  It’s been a week of pizza, beer, cheese, and scones.  My 80/20 is slipping, and with each increase in the 20% is going my freedom from achy joints, twinges of anxiety, and random evil unhappy moods.  To get myself back on track, I went on a book-obtaining binge.  I bought the Primal Life Kit, borrowed The Power of Habit from my mom, and bought A New Earth and The Primal Blueprint from the second-hand bookstore.  Hopefully reading these books will give me the motivation and will power to just say no to the stuff I know will make me feel bad, physically and emotionally.

And that’s my recipe update.  Hope you are having a great week so far!

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

Tasty Paleo Crockpot Recipes

A friend recently asked if I have any good paleo crockpot recipes.  I have several, and I figured I might as well post the recipes here so everyone can see them.

Here are some of my tried and true favorites:

  • Bone Broth
  • Smokey Roast – This is one of my favorite roasts!
  • Slow Cooked Chicken Adobo – This is a very delicious chicken recipe.
  • Slow Cooker Turkey Breast – Good and easy
  • Primal Ham Bone Soup – I’ve made this several times, and it it always turns out delicious.  We got some smoked ham hocks with our pig, and they are perfect in this soup.
  • Garlic Pulled Pork – This tastes better when cooked in the oven, but I have cooked it in our Nesco roaster at 200 for 5 hours, and it turns out pretty dang tasty.
  • Oven-Baked Paleo Pork Ribs – We LOVE these.  I made the sauce once, and it didn’t turn out for me, but it could have been user error.  I put these in the crockpot on low (150-200) for 4-6 hours.

I have not tried these, but they are in my recipe binder to be tried soon:

Enjoy!

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Bring on the tasty!

It’s been a good week for new recipes in the Longoria household!

I tried this new gem:  Amaretti Thins.  The dough for these delicate, fancy-looking cookies tasted exactly like Bit O’ Honeys, which I absolutely love but never eat on account of the fact they will rot the teeth right out of my head.  These little darlings will do no such thing.  Their sweetness is derived from 1/3 cup of coconut sugar.  They are light, airy, crunchy, and beautiful.  Check out my Instagram feed to right for picture proof.  I will definitely make these again, but next time I will make a double batch and perhaps melt some dark chocolate with which to douse them.  Dark chocolate-covered amaretti thins would BLOW                          MY                          MIND.  Oh!  Just a note – I didn’t want to buy an $8 bottle of almond extract, so I used my home-made rum vanilla instead, and it tasted great.

My mind was blown by the pork chops we had tonight as well:  Sweet Fire Porterhouse Pork Chops.  These were insanely easy to make.  I whipped up the marinade in 7 minutes over my lunch hour, slathered it on the chops with my fingers, and let it sit in the fridge for about 5.5 hours.  Tim grilled them up tonight, and they were juicy, delicious, and addictive. I wanted to eat all 4 of them.  I couldn’t believe how strong the orange flavor came through, just from the orange zest.  We served these with a spinach, green onion, red pepper, and mushroom salad.  Perfect spring meal.

And that’s all my recipe updates for the week.  I was all jazzed about making Brussel Sprout chips to go with the pork chops, but the sprouts were $2.99/lb, and I couldn’t justify $6 for side dish.  When sprouts go on sale, I’m definitely going to try it!

I’m also planning to try this new Salt Roasted Lamb recipe this weekend.  Salt is one of my most favorite things, so how could meat cooked in a thick blanket of it not be amazingly delicious!  I hope Mom is ready for this…

So that’s my news. Oh, I did fall UP the stairs at work today.  My back is a little tweaked, but I think I will survive.  My back was sore to start with as Tim and I ran, swam, and biked this weekend.  Don’t worry – I ate and drank more than enough to sustain me!!  But, man, does road biking ever do a number on your back.  I also got wicked sunburned from the riding.  I’m just  falling apart here.

Well, I hope you have an awesome evening.  Go make the amaretti thins and be sure to appreciate their dainty beauty before scarfing them all down.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

I’m such a slacker

Man, I haven’t posted since March! That was two weeks ago!  Why have I been so lazy??  I don’t really know, to be honest.  Work is busy like always.  We’ve had a few bouts of good weather, so Tim and I have been running and biking a little more.  We did a super fun bike ride on Saturday, the Tour de Brew QC.  We biked 42 miles and hit 8 different bars/restaurants on the route.  We didn’t eat or drink at all of them, so don’t be all judgey.  It was a really fun time.  But that only accounts for one day of the past 15.  Hmmm.  Well, I just don’t know, so I’m going to move on.

So what have I missed of importance of these past two weeks?  I guess it’s been a pretty quiet couple of weeks!  I only have a few recipes to share with you.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was going to and did make Slow-Cooked Chicken Adobo.  This recipe is incredibly easy, yet tasty.  I don’t have any coconut aminos, so I used tamari instead.  We liked this recipe so much that I made it TWICE in the past 2 weeks.  We served it with sauteed shredded cauliflower, and it was delicious.

Another winning recipe was this one for Apple & Arugula Bison Burgers.  I didn’t have any bison, so I made these with grass-fed ground beef.  I really wanted to make the paleo buns too, but we wanted to catch the 1PM showing of Captain America, so I didn’t have time.  The burgers themselves turned out quite tasty, and the addition of the apple and egg made the pound of meat stretch to make 4 burgers instead of the usual 3.  Also, I know this is probably common knowledge, but sauteing onions in coconut oil for 20 minutes makes the most delicious treat you have ever had.  Who knew onions could be so tasty!!

As I’ve mentioned before, we are trying to get more liver in our diet.  My brother read a tip about how to eat more liver that I’m going to try next time I have a pound of it. Put the liver in a food processor and grind it up, then put it in ice-cube trays and freeze it.  Pop it out of the trays when frozen and put it in a freezer bag.  As you make soups, meatballs, stews, etc, add a cube or two of liver to it.  I used a similar idea and added some to ad-hoc meatballs I made.  I didn’t really follow a recipe – just added coconut flour, egg, spices, liver, onions, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, chili paste, etc. to a pound of hamburger and made meatballs out of them.  They turned out really tasty, and you could barely tell there was liver in them.

Ok, one last recipe – Double Chocolate Almond Espresso Muffins.  I made these last night.  The dough was AMAZING.  I had chocolate all over my fingers and face by the time these were in the oven.  The dough was VERY thick, due to the almond butter, so these were a work-out to stir.  So it was very unfortunate that I didn’t notice the I forgot to include the chocolate chips IN the batter before spooning the batter into the muffin cups.  I didn’t have the energy to scrape the batter back into the mixing bowl and add the chips, so I just kind of poured them on top and kept my fingers crossed. In retrospect, I should have re-stirred everything.  The muffins turned out tasty, but they were a little dry, and the half-melted chocolate on the top was ultra-messy.  I want to make these again, adding the chips INTO the batter this time.   I also want to monitor the doneness more carefully. I checked them at 20 minutes, and the toothpick came out very globby, so I put them in for 5 more minutes.  By then they were pretty dry.

But, they are still pretty damn tasty.  And this is why I’ve been shying away from making paleo treats lately.  I eat too many of them!!  I took some in to work, and yet I still have 3 muffins to call my own.  No one needs to be eating that much almond butter over the course of 3 days.  I’ve also realized that I truly love ultra-dark chocolate dipped in almond butter. That’s a much easier snack to make, and it’s easier to keep track of how much, exactly, I am eating.

Well, there you go.  That’s what’s been shaking here.  Exciting times, Neo!  Weeeeeooo!