Sunday Letters

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Thai Chicken Patties

heather

As promised in my last post, I’m trying some new recipes and doing more cooking at home this week.  It’s amazing how quickly one’s abs disappear after eating a few restaurant meals.  Ugh – chicken wings you are so tasty but so bad for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight we tried Thai Chicken Patties with Cabbage Slaw.  We made a few modifications to the recipe – some on purpose and some on accident.  Tim is not a huge fan of purple cabbage (on account of the fact it turns freakishly blue when it gets wet), so we used all green cabbage.  I got lazy/rushed at the grocery store and thought that parsley would do fine in place of cilantro (big difference!!).  Tim didn’t think parsley would taste good in the dish, so I googled cilantro substitutions and found that some people use celery leaves and/or mint leaves instead, so that’s what I did (using fresh mint from the garden – yay!).  I cannot find coconut aminos anywhere in the QC, so I was planning on using tamari instead.  However, when I started to make the dish, I realized that we had no tamari or soy sauce.  Again, I googled subs and ended up using a concoction of Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar, and fish sauce instead.  And, finally, we had no sriracha, so I used chile paste instead.  Oh!  And I was lazy and didn’t want to fry the patties, so I just sauteed the whole mess in coconut oil.

Verdict?  TASTY!  Tim and I really liked this dish. It has a lot of unusual flavors and is very light and fresh.  I will definitely make this again, but next time I will try to get all the proper ingredients. I think this meal would taste even better with the cilantro and red cabbage.  Also, as I was looking up the link to this recipe, I saw the blogger’s picture of the crispy chicken patties, and they look mouth-wateringly delicious.  Next time, I do it right!

I did have to chuckle at the blogger’s comments on the recipe – she said it’s an easy, quick recipe.  Before I read that, Tim and I were both commenting that the recipe seemed like a lot of work – a lot of chopping and a lot of ingredients.  I guess if you don’t mind chopping, it’s an easy recipe!  But, easy or not, it’s definitely worth the effort.

Tim and I did get our garden in the ground yesterday too, in case you were on the edge of your seat wondering about that.  We planted a vast array of peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, peas, etc.  We spent about $100 between dirt, compost, plants, and seeds.  Hopefully we will get something tasty out of it!  I do need to find a good squirrel/chipmunk repellent.  Those dirty bastards are already digging up holes all over the garden.  ARGH!!  I found a recipe for hot pepper tea that I’m going to make and try.  I’ll let you know if it works.

Take care, and have a fantastic evening!!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Paleo Cookies and Happy Chihuahuas

heather

Tim and I have an absolutely ancient chihuahua named Lucent.  We are currently sitting in our back yard enjoying this absolutely perfect spring day, and he is slowly wandering around the yard, pausing in patches of sunshine, looking for rabbit poop which is evidently delicious.  He’s old, he is partially blind, his back bends at a right angle, but he is still a happy little dog, as long as there is sunshine and tasty poop.  Ah, to be a dog…

I haven’t written lately.  Life was out-of-control busy these past couple of weeks, but busy with fun stuff – drinks with friends, hair highlights, art classes, etc.  Yet, busy it was, and I had no time or inclination to write.  Also due to the busyness I did not cook at much as usual and tried only 1 new recipe:  The Best Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies.

These truly are really good paleo cookies.  They taste like ALMOST normal cookies.  I followed the suggestion in the recipe and took the cookies out of the oven right when they started to brown.  They tasted great right out of the oven, but the next morning they were super limp and doughy.  I slid them back on to a cookie sheet and popped them back in the oven for maybe 5-7 minutes.  They came out PERFECT.  These are some tasty sons of bitches, so I have to be careful how often I make them.  They have 1.5 cups of almond flour in them, and I’ve read a few articles lately (like this one here) that make me question my (incorrectly prepared) nut consumption.  It would be waaay too easy to overeat nuts when they are made into cookies this tasty.

Next week is a much more sane week.  I’ve already planned out meals for the next 10 days, and I’m looking forward to cooking at home and trying some new recipes.  Besides that, we need to swing into full gear for tri-training (only about a month left – eeeeek!!).  On Saturday we are doing the Beer & Bacon Run at Sunderbruch Park to help prepare for the off-road tri run.  Pray for a sunny, 70 degree day!

Tim and I also purchased the goods to make a couple square foot gardens.  We got some compost, top soil, plants, and seeds.  This is a new venture for us, so wish us luck.  If we get $100 of produce out of these, or a least some meditative, out-doors time, I’ll be happy.

And that’s my update for the week.  Hope you are enjoying this beautiful Saturday!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

$30 Lackluster Lamb

heather

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

heather

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!

heather

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

heather

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!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

I killed winter dead

heather

It’s 50 degrees and sunny today.  I’m declaring winter dead.  Officially.  My name rhymes with weather, so my word actually holds some weight.  To celebrate the non-depressingness of today, I got a great massage for $15 this morning, had a Bloody Mary with a friend, ran 3.1 miles, raked a portion of the yard, and took a shower.  After planning the meals for the week (Slow Cooked Chicken Adobo, Beef & Cabbage Stir Fry, Salmon, Spaghetti Squash Crusted Quiche, Swedish Meatballs, and Amaretti Thins (for dessert)), I started this blog post, wrestled with whether or not to buy running tights from REI (said no for now – super proud of myself), and then went to the store.  And that’s my March 29th so far.

Last week I made a couple of tried and true recipes and one newbie.

1.  Oven-Baked Paleo Pork Ribs.  I put the spice rub on these ribs the night before, and then put them in the Nesco on 200 for about 6 hours.  While I was at work, Tim kept a close eye on them and took them out right when they were fall-off-the-bone tender.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve tried the bbq sauce mentioned in the recipe, and it did not turn out AT ALL for me, so I didn’t make it again.  We saved the juice that cooked out the ribs, however.  It mixes with all the spices and makes a super tasty sauce for the meat.

2.  To accompany the ribs, I tried a new recipe, the tantalizingly named, Broccoli Salad.  The mix of bacon, raisins, sunflower seeds and bacon sounded very interesting.  I sauteed the sunflower seeds in the bacon grease and added some salt to them. I left out the onions, as Timmy Tee is not a fan of raw onions.  This turned out amazingly delicious.  Tim and I both loved it, even though I typically do not like raw broccoli.  Here’s a pic of the ribs, broccoli salad, and the kimchi Tim made.

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This morning I prepared supper for tonight – pork chops and sweet potato salad.  I’m using a garlic ginger marinade I found in an Allrecipes magazine, so I can’t link to it, but I sure can show you a picture of it!  Tim is grilling these babies up as I type.

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Here is the recipe for the potato salad.  It seems as if whenever I make paleo mayo, I can never use it all before it supposedly goes bad (3 days).  I had some leftover mayo from the broccoli salad that I made last week.  It still smelled totally fine, but I was wary of using week-old mayo.  Instead, I added some rice wine vinegar, olive oil, and mustard to the potatoes and accouterments.  It turned out really good, and you can’t even tell it doesn’t have real mayo in it!  I think I’ll continue to use this shortcut in the future and save myself the expense of wasting 1/2 a cup of premium quality California olive oil.

And that’s it for today!  Tomorrow is supposed to be even more beautiful, so we are planning a 30 mile bike ride.  I’m going to be falling asleep at my desk on Monday…  I need to find a job where I can cook, eat, run, and bike for a living!

Hope you have a great Saturday!

Health & Fitness, Paleo

Paleo Meal Planning

heather

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I have a method to my madness – at least as far as meal planning goes.  I know this is a tough area for a lot of people, so I thought I would share my process.  Please forgive the lackluster photos; I’m afraid that if I wait for good lighting and good photos, I will keep putting off writing this post as I have already done for the past 18 months.

Every Saturday or Sunday I stand at our kitchen table (my brother made us a beautiful kitchen table that we set up at bar height) and flip through my huge binder of recipes.

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I follow about 7 paleo bogs (via Feedly/RSS), which is where I get most of my recipes.  I get a ton from Chris Kresser, Paleomg, and Mark Sisson.  I print out the recipes (usually choosing ones with common ingredients and spices.  I try to not buy anything special for just 1 recipe) and file them in one of 7 tabs: Misc., Beef, Chicken, Pork, Fish, Veggies, Desserts.  If a recipe calls for two kinds of meat (beef and pork, for example), I’m in quite a quandary as to where to file it.  I just have to make a snap judgement and live with it.  It’s pretty intense.

I usually scan the freezer, see what kinds of meat I already have, and then flip through the binder to find some tasty-sounding recipes.  I pull them out and start to write out my menu for the week.

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Wow. That picture is really bad.  But you get the idea – I list out the dish, along with the major ingredients.  I put this on the fridge so I can easily tell if I can eat that red pepper in my lunch-time salad, or if I need to save it for a specific recipe.

I use this plan to make up my grocery list.

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I usually review the Wednesday HyVee ad as well and add anything that is on sale or that looks exceptionally tasty.

Tim and I then head out to the grocery store, load up on food stuffs, come home and try to find a place for everything in our tiny fridge.  If I’m feeling especially ambitious, I will cut up veggies and rinse and salad-spin our greens.

The whole process of finding recipes, writing out the meal plan, and then making the grocery list takes probably 1/2 an hour.  It’s pretty painless and helps keep us from eating out too much.

I’m sure there are better ways to do this whole process, but this has worked well for me for the past  2 years.

Hope you found that helpful, and thank you for putting up with the bad photography.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Devils on Horseback and Other Random Shiz

heather

My good friend, Michael, hosted a Drink & Draw at his place on Saturday.  Well, ostensibly it was a Drink & Draw.  In reality it was a Drink & Eat & Play Dirty Cards.  No drawing was to be had.  We did TALK about drawing, at least, so that’s something.  We also did drink.  A lot. We definitely had the drinking part of the Drink & Draw covered.  We also ate a lot of tasty food – nice cheeses, gluten-free crackers, grapes, corned beef & cabbage, lots of dark chocolate, etc.  It was all very tasty.  What was my contribution to the festivities, you may ask?  Any guesses?  I’ll just tell you – Devils on Horseback (aka the boringly named “bacon wrapped dates”).

This was my first attempt at making these tasty treats, but not my first attempt at eating them.  I generally love dates, so when I saw them on the Biaggi’s New Years menu in 2013, I had to try them.  They                 BLEW                    MY                      MIND.  They were so delicious.  So I finally got around to trying them on Saturday.

They are incredibly easy to make – you just cut bacon in half, wrap it around dates, stick them in the oven to cook, and then hit them with the broiler.  They turned out pretty damn tasty too. However, next time I make these I will broil them for about 3 minutes and then flip them and broil them on the other side for 3 minutes.  My dates got a little too toasty on the top when I broiled them on one side for 5 minutes.  I would also like to try the modification mentioned in the recipe and stuff the dates with goat cheese before wrapping them in bacon.  I think that would be amazing.

This is not a cheap treat, what with the cost of dates and pork these days, and with the high carb content of dates, this is not something you should be eating a ton of anyway.  I think I ate 3 of them at least.  They are dangerous.

Now on the “Other Random Shiz.”

My skin, which always does poorly in the winter, was finally starting to clear up and look semi-good, only to regress back to annoyingness.  I tried to pin-point the cause of the relapse.  All I can think of is that for awhile I was drinking about 1 cup of bone broth a day, but then I ran out, so I stopped.  To rectify this situation I journeyed to the Farmers Market on Saturday to pick up some soup bones.  I got a few packages of chicken bones for $10, but then.  Then, I hit the mother load.  I went to the Sawyer Beef guy, and he sold me this for $16:

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That is 16 pounds of grass fed marrow bones.  I was in heaven.  I eagerly carted them home with the intention of separating the bones into more reasonably-sized packages.  When I opened the box, I realized that the bones were hopelessly frozen together.  After pounding  away at them for a few minutes and ruining a perfectly good Pampered Chef wooden spoon, I  gave up and just left the bones out to defrost until I could pry them apart.

Once I could break off a few bones, I combined them with apple cider vinegar, a frozen bag of veggie clippings, a chopped onion, a bay leaf, garlic, and filtered water.  I set the Nesco on low and let it cook away.  I bagged up the rest of the bones into more reasonably-sized packages, but them in our freezer, and headed off to run errands.

When we returned home, we were assaulted by the odor of marrow being forcefully sucked from the insides of large cow bones.  I promptly set up a table in the back porch and took the broth out there to cook down in peace.

About 24 hours later, I drained the chunks out of the broth, let the bones cool, and then took a knife to the inside of the bones, pulling out all the marrow that was still remaining.  I dumped the chunky marrow into the broth, and then poured the broth in batches into our Vitamix, blending the broth until it was a nice, foamy caramel brown, which I then poured into jars for freezing.

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The broth turned out really well, IMHO.  I had some yesterday and today and will continue to drink it until my stupid skin starts to behave again.

And that was our weekend!  Hope you enjoyed your Saint Patrick’s Day in a healthy, responsible matter.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

Smokey Roast Yay! Liver Nay!

heather

As we all know, liver is insanely good for you and should be consumed regularly.  However, as we all also know, its texture and flavor can be, well, troublesome.  I generally like liver, but I’m on a constant quest for a better recipe – a recipe where I make it and say, “Oh.    My.     Goodness.  This liver is awesome, and I’m going to eat this whole 1/2 pound.”  I ran across this recipe and was intrigued by the idea of marinating the liver.  I thought maybe it would make it more tender and less liverish. Unfortunately, it didn’t.  It was still very livery, and I still had unpleasant liver burbs all day long after eating it.  Tim also was not a fan of the flavor of this dish.    So far the best way I’ve found to sneakily incorporate liver is to add some (1/4 a pound) to meatballs or meatloaf.  I’ve read you can also liquify it and add it to soups, but for some reason the thought of liquified liver just really grosses me out.

On a positive note, I tried a new recipe which I absolutely love:  Smokey Roast.  For this recipe you apply a spice rub of ground coffee, chipotle, cocoa powder, cinnamon, garlic, oregano, cumin and salt to a nice chuck roast. Really rub it in!  Then you heat up a skillet with some fat (the recipe calls for coconut oil, but I used bacon grease) and sear all sides of the meat.  Then you toss it in the crockpot on top of a sliced red onion, add some water, and let it slow cook.  Tim is home during the middle of the day, so he kept a watchful eye on the roast (I have a tendency to overcook roasts and dry them out), and took it out right when the meat was ready to fall off the bone.

It was PERFECT.  The meat was seared on the edges, but still a little pink in the middle.  It was ultra tender, and the the juice from the meat/spices/onions, was a tasty meat-bath of subtle deliciousness.  We ate it with Tim’s home-made sauerkraut for 2 meals.  The only regret I have about this roast is that after heating some of it up for breakfast, I acccidently left the pot out all day and had to toss the remainder of the leftovers.  Such a shame.

So try this recipe ASAP!