Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Red Food, Magic Tea, and Rendering

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, which is why I again have been so lax in posting!  It’s ridiculous, I know.  And I apologize.  Now that that is out of the way, let’s get started.

1. I made a super tasty recipe yesterday:  Roasted Root Vegetable with Sausage.  This turned out amazingly tasty!  I used the tallow that I rendered (more to come on that later) to roast the veggies.  We ate it for supper yesterday, breakfast/lunch today, and for supper tonight. For tonight I cooked two over-easy eggs and put that on top.  Awesome.  This recipe is super easy, makes a ton, and has loads of stuff that is good for you in it.  And it’s red.  The beets make everything red.  Including your poop.

2.  One of the girls in my YTT program gave me a Jun scoby.  Jun is a fermented beverage, made with green tea and honey.  It’s called the “champagne” of kombuchas. It’s very easy to make, as long as you have the scoby.  You bring water to 165 degrees, brew 2 teaspoons of green tea in it for 2 minutes, add 1/4 cup of honey, and let the mixture come to room temp.  Then you add the scoby (which looks like an alien life form).  Three days later, you have Jun!  You can also do a second ferment, which makes the Jun less sweet and more fizzy. It’s a very delicate flavor.  From what I’ve read, Jun is very mystical/magical.  Some people who brew it meditate with their Jun and also play music for it.  I don’t go that far, but I do tell people not to say anything bad about the Jun within the Jun’s hearing.

3. Tallow!  We received several pounds of beef fat from the 1/8 of a cow we bought, so I tried my hand at rendering it, using this recipe.  It turned out fantastic!  It smells slightly beefy, but not overpowering at all.  When in liquid form, it’s a very bright yellow color, but it cools to a milky cream color.  I’ve given 2 jars of it away already and am already 1/2 way through my remaining 3rd jar, so I’m going to have to go on a rendering spree this weekend.

4.  Porridge!  Sometimes a hot, oatmeally type breakfast just sounds super tasty. So I decided to try this recipe.  It turned out very delicious, but I’m not planning on making it again.  It’s pretty carb heavy, for one thing (it has a banana, apple, and raisins in it). Also, with all the nuts, it’s a pretty expensive breakfast.  It made a ton, but due to how carb-heavy it is, it’s not something I would want to eat for breakfast several days in a row.  I keep reading articles that emphasize that you should eat carbs at night for better hormone balance, better sleep, and better body comp.  If I did make this again, I would make it for supper, not breakfast.

5.  And lastly, a quick update on my yoga-ing.  I’ve been going to a hot yoga class at 5:30 AM, and much to my surprise, I LOVE it!  It gives me a ton of energy for the day, and it’s so nice to know that I don’t have to worry about working out when I get off work. My hard work is already done for the day!  It’s also much easier for me to control my schedule at 5:30 AM than it is later in the day, so I’ve actually been able to make it to a yoga class 3 times a week!  I can’t believe what a big difference that makes in my abilities.  I felt so much stronger and more focused in my class on Saturday, after going to class Wednesday and Friday.  The only down side is, once my free classes run out (we get a year’s worth of free classes as part of the YTT program), I’m going to have to sign up for the $100 monthly plan at my studio, so I can keep up with practicing!!

And that’s my update!  That’s a lot to throw out there, but I’m behind on writing for 2015.  I gotta catch up!

Hope you are having a fabulous February so far. 🙂