Wow. That really doesn’t sound tasty. Good thing all of those ingredients were in separate dishes this week.
All of the paleosphere has been atwitter with articles about “How to stay Paleo during the holidays.” I kind of dismissed them, like, um, just eat the turkey, make a salad, man up, man! But, after going through Thanksgiving, I have to say, maybe I should have taken those articles more to heart. Holidays do a number on you psychologically. You have all these comfort foods that you only eat once or twice a year, then you add in the short days (which for me increases my sugar cravings), then you compound the situation by being away from your house and your healthfully-stocked cupboards. Next thing you know, you are drinking wine and eating cheese curds chased down with dark chocolate M&Ms at 9:45AM. *Sigh*
So, yeah, the holidays have been pretty bad for me so far. BUT, today is a new day, and I’ve been eating perfectly so far. Granted, it’s only 11AM, but still. Small wins, man, small wins.
I tried a few recipes over the past few weeks. One was great, one was OK, and one was, well, OK, but less than OK than the other one that was just OK.
Lemon Lamb Meatballs: I made these last night, and they were delicious. They tasted a lot like gyro meat. They were incredibly easy and quick to make too. The only drawback is that ground lamb locally costs $9.50 PER POUND. Yikes.
Pumpkin Bread French Toast: This is the recipe that turned out not as OK as the other OK recipe. First of all, I printed out the recipe the day it was posted, so I didn’t realize that the author forgot to list eggs in the ingredient list until I made the dough, and it was the consistency of paste. I thought it didn’t look right, and I was also confused about whether the 2 T of coconut oil listed in the recipe included the 1 T of coconut oil used to toast the pepitas. So I looked up the comments and found out I needed to add 3 eggs. No one asked about the coconut oil, so I added about 1.5 T of oil, just to be on the safe side. Don’t misundertand me. I’m not complaining about the recipe being wrong. The writer of that blog posts free recipes almost daily, and I am grateful for that. Anyway, back to the bread. It was very DENSE. And very spicy! The recipe called for a T of cinnamon! That seemed like a lot to me, but I like to follow recipes very meticulously, so I added it. Between the cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, however, the bread was too spicy for the Timmy Tee.
I liked the bread OK as a bread, but when I made it into french toast, I was not a fan. It made the bread too pasty. It was almost as if we were eating pumpkin bread pudding. Maybe I did add too much oil… I definitely added too much oil to the pan while cooking the french toast. When I flipped the toast, I got sprayed with a healthy dose of searing hot coconut oil. Blast.
Crockpot Sweet Potato Basil Soup: This soup was good (OK), albeit pretty thick. If I were to make it again, I would add 2 cups of broth instead of one. I also browned a pound of ground pork and added that to the soup, which made it even thicker. Overall, I liked the taste – it was a nice detour from the usual sauteed veggies with a side of meat standby. But, I have a 2 inch binder that is bursting at the seams, full of recipes, so I think I’ll toss this one to make room for another one we might like better.
I also tried my hand at making bone broth this weekend. Saturday morning I tossed a bunch of random bones from the freezer (duck bones, chicken bones, pork bones) into the Nesco Roaster, added some thyme, apple cider vinegar, carrots, onions, celery, etc., filled the roaster to the top with filtered water and then let it cook until this morning. The broth turned out a lovely golden color. It tastes pretty good, but maybe a little bitter? I think it will serve well as stock, and hopefully it will cure the Timmy Tee and me of all our knee complaints. We ran the local Turkey Trot Five Miler on Thursday and both came out of it with busted knees. Tim’s got better on his own, but I had to sit in a super hot eucalyptus epsom salt bath for an hour. Then I was pretty much right as rain.
And that’s all the new recipes for the week! I’m trying a couple of new ones today (home-made Lara bars and Salmon with Citrus Salsa), but I’ll save those write-ups for next time.
In the meantime, have a fantastic, healthy week!
