Sunday Letters

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Best Chicken Marinade Ever

heather

My mom was kind enough to pick up some organic frozen chicken breasts for us from Costco.  I had them defrosted in the fridge when I serendipitously ran across a Honey Mustard Chicken recipe in my RSS feed.  Tuesday night I mixed up the marinade and poured it over sliced up chicken breasts resting in a Pyrex dish.  I lacked ginger, and for the mustard I used the local favorite, Boetjes.  The chicken stewed in the marinade for about 24 hours, and we cooked it up last night.  The recipe instructs you to move the chicken into a fresh Pyrex dish, but I don’t understand why!  I just left in the original dish, and popped the works into a 400 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes.  The chicken turned out SUPER delicious – very moist and flavorful.  We ate it with a green salad, chopped cauliflower and green pepper and kalamata olives.  This recipe is definitely a keeper – very simple, yet very delicious.  Oh!  And I totally ignored Instruction #3 (where you boil down the juices and leftover marinade), and the chicken was still very moist and tasty.

Also – here is an update on the Ginger and Lemongrass Meatballs recipe.  When I made the meatballs, I ran out of room on my pan.  I didn’t want to have to bake two trays of meatballs, so I put the leftover mixture in a pan and cooked it up like the ground meat it was.  Tim had the brilliant idea to use this mixture in a rice stirfry.  He made some tasty nice and dry basmati rice, sauteed it with olive oil, added the cooked meatball mixture and a healthy dollop of Thai chili paste.  I don’t typically eat rice, but I had to try a bite of this because it looked and smelled so tasty.  It could possibly be the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten.  Thai chili paste is amazing.

It’s 5:59, and I have to head out for a run.  I’ve been trapped in a basement (ahem, “garden level”) conference room all week working on a project, and unless I exercise in the morning, I start to lose it about 2PM.

I hope you have a fantastic Thursday!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Fancy sounding food that sucks

heather

I tried two new recipes this week – much to the dismay of my pocketbook.  Trying new recipes can be an expensive gamble, especially when you are talking about high quality, healthfully-raised meat.

Hot & Spicy Pulled Pork – Tim and I were not fans of this recipe.  The recipe instructions say you can put it together “in a snap,” but cutting up all of the tomatillos, tomatoes, peppers, etc. took quite a while.  The end result was bland – not spicy at all.  Perhaps it’s because I used a poblano pepper instead of a serrano pepper.  While the sauce tasted good, the pork did not have much flavor.    In fact, we didn’t even end up eating it all.  I ended up tossing probably about 1/2 of the sauce/stew too.  It didn’t taste BAD; we just weren’t that into it.  I’ve written about this before (and should have remembered this before trying the recipe), but a lot of roasts with tomatoes, onion, and garlic end up tasting the same to me, and I don’t like that taste.  Oh well – nothing ventured, nothing gained, right??  As always, I appreciate the fact that people post their recipes for free on the internet though!

Ginger & Lemongrass Meatballs with Braised Scallions – Tim and I LOVED this one.  Lamb is just a really delicious, flavorful meat, and this recipe makes it even more delicious by mixing it with pork, garlic, ginger, basil and cilantro.  As indicated in the title of the recipe, you are supposed to add lemongrass, but I could not find it anywhere, so I subbed lemon zest for it.  The meatballs were still very tasty!  Tim’s going to make some basmati rice and eat it with the leftovers.  The fancy-sounding Braised Scallions, on the other hand SUCKED!!  I used green onions from the Farmers Market, and they were basically unedible – super tough and difficult to eat.  We ate the centers out of about 2 of them, and then tossed the lot.  I don’t know what I did wrong!  Mark made them sound so delicious in the introduction to his recipe.

What’s on tap for the weekend?  Leftover meatballs 🙂  And a bike ride from Cordova to Fulton and back.  Having a friend over for supper and a bonfire.  And I need to go shopping.  Need to.  We need to buy a deep freezer.  And I want to swim.  I might drag Tim to one of the local pools that have tiny water slides.  I have to eat well this weekend too.  We had a milestone birthday on our team this week, which resulted in cake, donuts, alcohol, chips and bean dip, etc.  As a result yesterday I was dealing with pre-primalish mood swings and anxiety, and it’s carried over to today. I’m hoping a day of being outside, exercising, and eating good food will get me back on track.  I forgot how bad it feels to feel bad!  I really need to remember how horrible sugar makes me feel.

I hope you have a great weekend.  Get outside. Play.  Appreciate the beauty of late summer.  I’ll quit bossing you around now.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Dangerous Paleo Treats

heather

IT’S SATURDAY – WEEEEOOOOO!!   It’s sunny and beautiful out.  I’m heading to the Farmer’s Market in a bit, going to try to hit it before it gets busy.   I love local food, but I hate crowds and slow people, both of which are rampant at the FM.  After that I need to hit the library, the grocery store, the pavement (for a run), and then we’re heading up to Monticello to see Mom and Dad and wish Mom a Happy Birthday weekend.  I asked her if she wanted me to make a treat for her birthday, and she wants, instead, for me to make her the Cowboy Breakfast Skillet!  I shall get her and Dad on the paleo bandwagon yet!!

I tried a few new recipes this week.  Here is the one we are most excited about:  Chunky Monkey Muffins.  It’s another Health-Bent recipe.  These guys are geniuses.  They just released a cookbook, Primal Cravings.  Based on the recipes on their blog, I’m sure the recipes in the book are fantastic, but I’m trying to be more careful about spending money, so I haven’t purchased it yet.  Back to the recipe – these muffins are DELICIOUS!!!  Tim loved them, and I took them into work, and my coworkers said I should open a paleo bakery.  Maybe they were just stroking my ego, but regardless, these are some tasty sons of bitches.  They had a perfect muffin consistency (not too dense), which I think is probably due to the tapioca flour.  It was also the first time I’ve used coconut sugar.  It smells like heaven.  I used pecans instead of walnuts, and I went a little heavy on the chocolate, of course.  I used about 1/2 a cup of dark chocolate chips, and then I chopped up a couple of squares from a dark chocolate bar.

So, in reference to the title of the post.  This is a DANGEROUS paleo treat.  While eating one of these muffins is way better for you than eating a muffin from, say, Panera, there is still a lot of sugar and carbs in these.  Tim and I are only 2 people.  What are two people to do with 12 muffins??  Well, I took 3 into work, and then Tim and I finished off the rest.  I should probably eat like ONE of these a week, not FOUR over the course of 2 or 3 days.  This is why I really SHOULD open a paleo bakery, so that like-minded people could go to a nicely decorated, lovely-smelling bakery, spend an exorbitant amount of money on ONE muffin and feel better about themselves than if they saved money, made their own muffins, and then ate them all.  Paleo Bakery, here I come.  What should I call it?  Hmmm….  Heather’s Home-Cooked Creations?  Hlo’s Paleos?  Suggestions??

Shoot.  I have to get booking here – I got to get ready for the FM.  So, real quick, I also made The 21 Day Sugar Detox “Fettucini” with Meat Sauce.  I think you have to buy the ebook for this recipe – it’s not posted online.  The meat sauce was tasty (thanks for making it, Tim!).  Tim and I ate it ALL in one meal, which is impressive considering it was a full pound of meat.  However, I was not a fan of the “fettucini” which consisted of sauteed zucchini “noodles.”  They just seem kind of limp and greasy.  Next time I will just cut the zucchini into chunks and put the meat sauce over it.

I also made a new recipe to accompany our Hebrew National hot dogs:  Tomato and Olive Salad.  The combination of the low rent hot dogs with fancy kalamata olives amused me.  This salad was super easy and pretty tasty, but next time I will go lighter on the lemon juice.  It made the salad VERY tart!  I ate some of the leftovers with eggs yesterday, and that was a tasty combo.

And those are my new recipes for the week.  Hope you  have a fantastic weekend, and thanks for reading!

Cooking/Recipes, Paleo

Sweet Potato Chips

heather

I tried a new recipe last night:  Sweet Potato Chips.  We’ve been having delightfully cool weather this week, so I wasn’t concerned about turning on the oven.

I sliced the potatoes using our mandoline (careful to not slice off the tips of my fingers.  I don’t think Heather Finger Chips would taste good, no matter how much coconut oil and salt you put on them).  For the first batch, I laid down parchment paper as the recipe instructs, laid out a single layer of sliced potatoes, brushed coconut oil on both sides and salted both sides.  For the second batch, I put the potatoes directly on a cookie sheet and oiled and salted them. I put both pans in the oven at the same time.

The chips placed directly on the cookie sheet crisped up MUCH better than the chips on the parchment paper.  However, they had a tendency to stick to the pan, making them difficult to flip over.  So for the 3rd and 4th batches, I tossed the parchment paper, sprayed the pans with coconut oil cooking spray (which is really cheap at Trader Joes, FYI), and tossed them in the oven.  These batches turned out MUCH better – very crispy and pretty easy to flip over during the cooking process.

After the chips crisped up in the oven, I slid them onto a wire rack to cool.  The original batch that I made on the parchment paper seemed really under cooked once they cooled, so I put them back on a sheet and put them back in the oven.  They crisped right up, and turned out fantastic.

For my last batch, I added some chili powder and garlic salt to the chips.  Very good!

I had to cook each batch about 3-5 minutes longer than the recipe called for.  You have to keep a pretty close eye on these suckers.  The potatoes are sliced very thin, so they can go from perfect to burnt within a few seconds.

While this recipe is kind of a lot of work, we’ll definitely be making these again.  And by we, I mean me.  🙂  I’m not sure they end up being that much cheaper than Terra chips once you consider the costs of the food and the time, but these are much better for you.  Terra chips are cooked in canola oil, safflower oil, and sunflower oil.

I stored the leftovers in a Pyrex dish, and they are a little chewy this morning.  Maybe if I tossed them in the oven for a few minutes, they would firm up again?  If anyone has suggestions for how to store these to keep them crispy, let me know!

Health & Fitness

I’m all grows up

heather

I had training in Minneapolis this week, and I could not find any loved ones to accompany me, so I had to go solo.  That meant driving 5.5 hours all by lonesome and navigating through some big city traffic to arrive at my destination.  I do not enjoy driving in general, and I especially detest driving in heavy city traffic, which abounds in Minneapolis.  I figured I better suck it up and get over it…so I did.

Fortunately the rental car company gave me a Ford Edge, replete with Sync and all sorts of comfortable amenities.  It was so nice to be able to plug in my phone and control everything with the massive touch screen in the car.  However, now that I see how nice cars CAN be, my sweet Fusion is starting to pale in comparison.  Sometimes I think the secret to contentment is not knowing what else is available – seeing the greener grass in all its convenient glory.  Anyway, I digress.  A friend of mine gave me the  Brief History of Time audio books, and after wrangling with my iPhone for a few hours, I finally figured out how to get the books loaded.  The books entertained me delightfully for the first 4 hours of the journey, when all of the sudden, the book started over at the beginning, right when I was learning about how the Earth is losing magnetism and how that might mean the end of the human race.  I really wanted to see how the story was going to end, so I was quite disappointed.  I evidently did not really figure out how to load the audio book on my phone.  I only figured out how to load a portion of the audio book to my phone.  Silly Hlo.  Anyway, I finished off the trip listening to the Robb Wolf Podcast, which was pretty entertaining.

The drive into the city was pretty uneventful.  I almost plowed over a car while taking an exit, but I DIDN’T actually plow it over, so all was well.  I checked into my hotel (a super nice Homewood Suites, well-equipped with full kitchen, king-size bed and ceiling fan), and set out to investigate the area.  I found a grocery store across the street, a Lululemon down the road, and a whole slew of restaurants – very nice area for a hotel.  I wandered through Lululemon, successfully talking myself out of buying $60 running shorts, then made myself a massive salad from the salad bar at the Rainbow Foods grocery store. I retreated to the hotel and was in bed by 9ish, wary of what to expect the next day.

The next day was actually really good.  I met and befriended the two other people in my class who were from out-of-town and promptly conscripted them to have dinner with me.  We had an excellent evening together despite horrible service and overpriced food.

The rest of the training went by well and quickly.  The instructor was amazingly organized and efficient and had a good read for when the class was starting to get disengaged.  It was definitely one of the better training sessions I’ve ever gone to.  One would hope that a Business Analyst Bootcamp would be well-run, since BAs are all about efficiency and taking care of the details, but I was  still pleasantly surprised.

By the end of the week I had made 2 new friends, learned how to write use cases, reconnected with a cousin I hadn’t seen in years, gained 2 pounds from eating lots of tasty food, ran 10 miles in total (and discovered a beautiful near-by trail thanks to our marathon-running class facilitator), faced my fears of driving in city traffic to venture to Trader Joes and my cousin’s, and finished two books (The Power of Now and Wool).  It was a very eventful week!  I’m actually glad that I ended up going alone because if I had gone with Tim or my mom, I just would have ended up staying in my comfort zone – hanging out with people I knew at places within walking distance.  It was a good learning experience, in more ways than one.

And now it’s back to work tomorrow.  I’m nervous about it, for some reason!  I feel as if I’ve been away a long time.  If it’s not too busy, I hope to review the notes from the class and update some of my templates and note a few things I want to implement.  I don’t just want to file the binder away and forget all the good tips I learned.

I wish you all a great week!  It’s beautiful here in Iowa.  I wish it would stay like this forever.

Health & Fitness

Lessons learned from the first 7 mile run of the season

heather

Tim and I recently decided that we are going to run The Bix 7.  The Bix is an iconic 7 mile run that starts in downtown Davenport, shoots up Brady Street hill, winds through McClellan Heights, and then shoots back down Brady to finish by the QC Times Building.  We did the run last year for the first time.  We thought the race was too crowded (and people were not honest about where they seeded themselves, so we had to do a lot of dodging around slower runners) to do again.  But here it is a year later, and we have a hankering to do it again.

So far this year, my runs have been between 3 and 5 miles.  That’s my sweet spot – where I feel energized but not beat.  So we figured that we should do a full 7-mile training run to prepare for next Saturday (aka Race Day).  The run itself went really well.  Tim and I both finished strong.  However, as it’s been a year since I’ve ran that far, I forgot a few things:

1.  When you run sockless, you better put some baby powder or Gold Bond or something in your shoes.  Sweaty feet encased in sweaty shoes is no fun.

2.  When you are extremely sweaty, clothes rubbing against your skin is also no fun.   I didn’t realize it until I was done, by my tank top was chafing the tender skin on the bottom of my upper arm.  It’s amazing how stingy skin abrasions can be.  I bought a stick of Body Glide for use with the wet suit for the triathlon.  I’m going to have use that on race day.

The rest of my gear held up pretty well.  Evidently my running shorts are playing peekaboo with my cheeks though, so I’m going to have to get a new pair of running shorts before next Saturday.  I’ve been doing some research, and all the really highly rated ones are $50+, which is retarded.  I’m going to have to get a second job to fund my running habit.

Hope you have a great day!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Recipe Fail

heather

I tried another new recipe this week, and I have to say, it sucked.   The recipe was for Zucchini Pasta with Avocado, Roasted Tomato & Bacon.  Sounds delicious, right?  That’s what Tim and I thought too.  But it wasn’t.  Not at all.  I think it was too lardy.  And the bacon was too limp.  Who wants limp bacon?  No one, that’s who.  Perhaps I made it wrong?  Anyway, I won’t be making this one again.

Next week I’m going to be in training in Minneapolis all week, and I’m already dreading what I’m going to feel like come Friday night. It’s so hard to eat well when traveling, especially when traveling alone.  Unless I work up the courage to befriend my classmates, I’ll probably be hitting up Chipotle for a burrito bowl-to-go every night.  I’ll need to stock up on Lara bars, beef jerky, and fruit so I have some healthy snacks in the hotel.  Otherwise I will for sure be eating a Snickers from the vending machine every night. Good thing Tim and I are doing the Bix 7 mile run on Saturday.  

And, that’s all I have to say.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately – about where to live, what do, how to make a meaningful, productive life.  I’m reading The Power of Now, which has gotten me thinking.  But I haven’t come to any conclusions yet, so I’ll hold my tongue, or my fingers or whatever.  In the meantime, all I will say is that I’m super impressed with myself because by using some internet sleuthing I was able to figure out how to get an audiobook onto my iPhone.  I’m a freaking genius.  

Cooking/Recipes

Porky Pasta

heather

Hellloooooooo!  It’s Tuesday morning, and I have to go back to work today.  Bah!  Blurg! Tim had the day off yesterday, so I took it off as well and used some of the free time to do some experimental cooking.  My basil was going nuts, so I decided to make some pesto using this recipe.  It’s incredibly easy to make, especially with a food processor.  I left out the Parmesan to make the recipe more paleo, and neither Tim nor I noticed it was missing. I baked a spaghetti squash in the Nesco Roaster, shredded it up, topped it with some ground pork and then poured a sizable helping of pesto over the whole mess.  I stirred it well, added some salt and pepper, and wow.  Delicious.  Tim has named this recipe, “Porky Pasta,” which I think is funny.  I think this would taste great with some sauteed veggies (zucchini?) as well.  The recipe makes A LOT of pesto, so I poured the remainder into ice cube trays, covered each cube with a little olive oil, then pressed saran wrap into the cups and froze the tray.  This morning I’ll pop the cubes out and put them in a freezer bag.  Each cube should be about 2 T of pesto.  I’ve never frozen pesto before, so hopefully this works out well.  Pesto is too expensive to waste!!

I also tried a new Health-Bent recipe, Barbacoa Meatballs with Guac.  This was another insanely easy recipe.  You mix up an assortment of spices, add it to the meatballs, bake them, and you’re done.  The “guac” is a very simple recipe – avocado and lime juice and s&p.  The meatballs did turn out a little dry, but we found that drizzling them with olive oil took care of that problem.

And there you go – two easy recipes to try.  Hope you have a great Tuesday!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Meatball Week

heather

This has been the week of meatballs.  Meatballs are so awesome.  They are little bite-sized morsels of spiced deliciousness.

Last night I made Beef Liver and Onion Meatballs again.  I think I’ve written about this recipe before.  Liver is tough for some people to eat, but it’s chock full of goodness and is fairly cheap for grass-fed meat.  Tim and I both like the taste of liver, but often it has stringy bits running through it which make it difficult to eat.  This recipe overcomes that drawback – you grind up the liver in a food processor!   Because I am efficient (aka lazy), I toss the liver in the food processor along with the onions and spices from our herb garden (dill, oregano, and basil).  I mix it all up for a few minutes and then add it to the ground beef.  The meatballs turned out delicious.  I made them with the tried and true Sweet Potato Salad.  I kicked it up a notch with fresh dill from the garden and chopped, cooked bacon.  It was so tasty.

Tonight we went out to Lake G for an open-water swim (Tim is considering doing another triathlon this summer).  I did a few test runs in the water; I was too scared to swim out in the middle of lake without a wetsuit.  Plus, in my defense, I ran 4.5 miles this morning and did 8 15 second sprints.  My legs were beat!  Anyway, after the swim we were pretty whooped.  We came home and sauteed broccoli with cauliflower, and I made Asian Pork Meatballs with Dipping Sauce.  We ate it with the leftover sweet potato salad and slices of avocado.  Not to toot my own horn, but it was a delicious supper.  I was super proud of myself too for planning my recipes so that I used ALL of my homemade mayo.  I love homemade mayo, but it only lasts for 3 days, so I always end up tossing some of it.  It’s too expensive and too tasty to waste.  

And that’s meatball week.  We’ll have leftover meatballs for breakfast and lunch tomorrow.  I sauteed chopped up beef & liver meatballs this morning in grass-fed butter with red peppers and zucchini.  It was delicious and kept me really full and satiated until I got to work and succumbed to a cherry donut.  So tasty and so bad.  I had rot gut immediately after consuming it, but I’m pretty sure it was worth it.

Tomorrow is Friday!  And Payday!  I hope you all have a fantastic, productive, in-the-moment day.  

Health & Fitness, Paleo

Fantastic Bruschetta Chicken Recipe

heather

I ran across this Bruschetta Chicken with Zucchini Pasta recipe last week and HAD to try it as it features one of the 4 herbs I have in my herb garden – BASIL!  My basil is growing fantastically, as is my oregano (it came back from last year – thanks Diane!).  The dill is doing pretty well too.  The parsley is not producing as much as I want to eat, but it’s persevering.  The cilantro is dead and buried.  RIP cilantro.

Anyway, back to the recipe.  I wish I would have thought ahead and made up the bruschetta and marinade yesterday.  As it was, I made everything when I got home from work last night and let the works sit for about an hour.  I made a few alterations to the recipe – Tim does not like balsamic vinegar, which is a pretty integral ingredient in bruschetta, so I went light on that.  Also, I had no walnut oil, so I used olive oil.  I also smashed the chicken breasts in a plastic baggie, so that they were nice and flat and would cook evenly, then I added the marinade to the baggie and rubbed it all over the breasts (wink wink).  I also forgot to buy a lemon, so  I used 1 T of lemon juice instead of the juice and zest from one lemon.  They turned out SUPER delicious.

I used my mandoline to create the zucchini noodles and to shave a little bit of flesh off the tops of my fingers.  I can’t figure out how to the use the little tool that is supposed to prevent you from shaving off the tips of your fingers.  It mystifies Tim and me utterly.

The combination of the parts – sauteed zucchini noodles, grilled & marinated chicken breasts, and garlicky, basily bruschetta – turned out fantastic.  This was a perfect summertime supper.  We will definitely make this again!  I can’t wait until my coworkers’ gardens explode with zucchini, so I can have it for free instead of paying $1/zucchini at the farmer’s market from some douchebaggy farmer who complains about how people hand him cash (not all perfectly sorted and straightened out).  I love having produce from the FM, but I hate buying it there.  Too many people, dogs, strollers, and sun. It’s so hot and crowded.

Tonight I’m making beef & liver meatballs, accompanied by sweet potato salad.  It’s going to be deeeeelicious.