Category: Cooking/Recipes

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Tasty, Easy Sunday Supper

heather

Sundays have a way of getting away from you.  We woke up today at 5:50 AM and now, all-of-the-sudden, it’s 6:46 PM.  Where did the day go?  We got some cleaning done, lawn mowed, checkbook updated, lunch at Bent River, and poof!  It’s gone!

But we’ve been eating out quite a bit lately, so I really wanted to make supper at home tonight, so I picked a quick and easy recipe I’ve made before – Asian Pork Meatballs with Dipping Sauce.  They are super easy to make and very delicious.  The recipe calls for mayo, and I know the Hellmans has all sorts of badness in it for you.  But it is oh, so tasty!  Plus, the recipe called for 1/3 a cup, which is all I had left.  So now I have no mayo in the house, which is a good thing.  Next time a recipe calls for it, I’ll make to make it from scratch from avocado oil, which I hear is ultra tasty.  I’ll have to search for a good recipe.

Anyway, I digress.  To accompany the meatballs, I baked some sweet potatoes in our roaster oven.  I made an extra one for breakfast tomorrow.  I’m getting to be so resourceful and foresightful!

The combo of the meatballs, sweet potatoes (and a little sliced avocado) was delicious.  I’m looking forward to sauteeing up the leftovers tomorrow for breakfast with some fresh herbs from my mini herb garden, along with some broccoli, cabbage, and red pepper.  I’m eating out for lunch and supper, so I have to be sure to get a good breakfast in.  I love meals that produce awesome, tasty, healthly leftovers.  Thanks, Health-Bent!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Primal Tasty Dessert – Coconut milk with berries

heather

As I mentioned in my last post, I have the occasional ice cream cravings.  I AM a hot-blooded American woman for crissake.  Well, I’ve discovered a pretty tasty, primal-aligned alternative.  I’ve been defrosting frozen organic berries, mixing them with fresh-sliced kiwi and copious amounts of coconut milk, freezing it until it’s slushy, and then eating the heck out of it.  It’s SUPER delicious, at least if you love coconut milk and berries.  If you don’t like those things, you will not like this dessert.  I really, really love coconut milk.  I need to move to Hawaii so I have access to more coconut products.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Ad Hoc Veggie Salad

heather

I bought a bum bag of organic salad mix this week.  It did not look appetizing for lunch, so I just pulled everything tasty looking out of the fridge and chopped it up.  Here’s what went into the lunch salad:

Half-can of tuna, 1 hard boiled egg, a couple pieces of cauliflower, a few broccoli florets, a carrot, 1/2 a stick of celery, 1/3rd an avocado. I diced up all of that and added some avocado oil, 1/2 T of apple cider vinegar, copious amounts of salt and pepper and turmeric, stirred it all up and nom nom nom.  You can see a picture in my Instagram feed to the right.

In fact, it was so tasty that I repeated it for supper, less the tuna & egg and plus grilled chicken.  Very delicious.  I couldn’t eat it all, and I’m already looking forward to tossing the whole leftover mess into the frying pan tomorrow morning with some coconut oil for breakfast.

On Sunday I spent maybe 45 minutes cutting up cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, & celery.  I feel bad using a bunch of plastic bags for this, but it makes life sooooo much easier during the week.  Plus, as Tim says, we’ve already done our part to protect the environment by not having kids.  Anyway, I take a baggie to work with me too, and instead of hitting the vending machine for a Take 5, I hit the fridge for some carrots.  It really helps stave off the cravings.

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Eating Buffalo

heather

I picked up some frozen buffalo patties (the ground up meat kind, not the flat, poop kind) at HyVee a few weeks back on a whim.  I finally remembered to take them out of the freezer this week, and Tim grilled them up.  They were FANTASTIC.  I ate the left-overs for breakfast – sauteed with veggies in coconut oil, with a side of fried eggs.  Deeeeelicious.  We just picked up another pack from HyVee today.

Here is a link to the farm that raises the bison.  They are beautiful creatures. I would feel bad eating them if they weren’t so damn tasty.

http://www.winterbison.com/

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

My concrete blood

heather

My parents are having a craft show at the end of this month.  When I say “craft show,” I’m sure you think of crocheted doilies, handmade pottery, home-made wooden birdhouses, fudge, beaded bracelets, etc., etc.  Oh, if only my parents’ craft show consisted of those things.  Their craft show consists primarily of concrete.  Concrete lawn ornaments.  As in really heavy, dusty, solid, concrete lawn ornaments.  Lawn ornaments that need to be moved around, repositioned, cleaned and organized before said craft show. Don’t get me wrong – the show will have many of the aforementioned items, but we were not enlisted to help with those.  We were enlisted to move what had to be 4 tons of concrete.

The task actually aligned well with the primal directive to “lift heavy things.”  I did use the exercise as an excuse to indulge a bit this weekend – a few pork rinds here, a few chocolate covered prunes there, some milk in my coffee, and to cap it all off – NACHOS.  I’m probably actually going to be up a couple of pounds this weekend, despite actually working hard.

And here’s an interesting fact/observation for all of you out there trying this whole primal thing – I’ve noticed that my digestion is affected by my hormonal cycle.  About 10 days before that time of the month (sorry boys), I gain about 2 pounds, and about 2 days after, I drop 4.  During the weight gain period, my stomach gets easily upset, and almost everything I eat (except my eggs & avocado) makes it feel wonky.  I need to look this up on the MarksDailyApple forums to see if this is unique to me or to be expected.  Anyway, sorry if that is TMI.  For many woman who are interested in the primal diet, however, I think it will be JTRAOI (just the right amount of information).

Anyway, it actually felt pretty good to work up a sweat and to get dirty.  My life is spent 40 hours a week in a cubicle, so it’s absolutely lovely to be outside all day, in the sun, the wind, and the rain.  The birds were out in full force, and between the wind in the Whispering Pines and the birds in said pines, it was a full-on nature orchestra out there.  So beautiful.  I want to move out to the country, convert an old barn into a house (completely open first floor – no walls except for the bathroom and a 2nd floor loft bedroom), plant a garden, buy a gun and prepare for the impending anarchy.  Oh, and I need to learn how to can veggies.  Hopefully before the anarchy strikes.

Ah, as I always say, tomorrow is another day. I’ll be back on the primal wagon – got some excellent meals planned (primal Italian wedding soup, pork with radish hash, heavenly meatloaf, salmon, sausage and sauteed sauerkraut and primal hot cereal), and hopefully we can get our weight bench set up, so I can start doing some more upper body weights.  My tri-ceps are getting all wobbly and disgusting.  At least my biceps are perking up a bit.  I’ve also started focusing on pull-ups more.  I’m doing a flexed arm hang for 15+ seconds and lowering myself slowly to the ground (a reverse pull-up).  I can do TWO of those.  I’m amazing, I know. I have been toying with the idea of doing Crossfit for a month, to learn good form, but it’s wicked expensive.  My older bro keeps trying to convince me it’s worth it, but at this point I should really be spending the money on clothes that actually fit me!  I’ll see how I feel at the beginning of April.  My weight loss/fitness has started to plateau – I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because of the copious amount of cheating I have been doing.  If I can’t get myself straightened out, I might bite the bullet.  Or I just might buy The Paleo Solution.  Maybe that will get me back on track. I’ve been listing to Robb Wolf’s podcast, and it’s really good.  I’m sure the book is good too.

Well, that’s it for today folks.  Hope your Sunday was awesome.  Here is a picture of the cutest dog ever (who just got a double-scrub and blow-dry this afternoon) to send you off with a smile on your face.

Cooking/Recipes

One Success, One Failure

heather

Last night I made a super delicious recipe: Easy Breakfast Scramble.  It’s from one of my favorite recipe/paleo blogs, Paleomg.  Get it??  Get it??  Anyway, the writer makes the most delicious foods and tons of paleo desserts.  Every one I’ve tried has been very tasty.

But back to the scramble. As you can see from the recipe, it’s very simple and basic.  The only odd ingredient (at least for my kitchen) was the Herbs De Provence.  I had never heard of it. I was wary that it was similar to the “peace and love” that I was missing for my last recipe.  Come to find out, Herbs De Provence is a mix of several different herbs native to Provence.  I found some substitution sites, however, so I ended up tossing together some marjoram, basil, rosemary, thyme, sage, etc.  It was quite the motley crew of spices, but the scramble turned out very tasty non-the-less.  I ate it with some Cholula and 1/2 an avocado.  It did make a ton, though, so my only concern at this point is eating it all before it gets old.

Tonight was another story.  I tried another primal recipe, Flank Steak Italiano.  This recipe was a huge disappointment. The meat turned out almost inedible – very tough and chewy.  I’m not sure why besides the fact that it’s a grass-fed flank steak, so it’s predisposed to be tough and chewy.  It was an expensive mistake though – what with the cost of the grass fed meat, the wine, 2 onions, garlic, lemon, etc.  Plus I had to prepare the marinade before work, stink up the kitchen with cut-up red onions, etc.  I probably did something wrong for it to end up so poorly, but I don’t know what.  At least the accompanying salad was good (spinach, radishes, carrots, celery, mushrooms, broccoli, cucumbers – tasty!).

But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?  As I told Tim, only rib-eyes for us going forward.  I’ve been burned by flank steak one too many times.

UPDATE:  I was thinking about this more last night and realized that part of my problem with the flank steak was that the marinade had wine in it.  After the meat is done marinating, you dump the marinade in a pan and heat it up.  I HATE the smell of wine cooking.  It has this unsettling sweet smell.  Shudder.  Note to self – no more cooking with wine!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Double-edged sword

heather

We went out for supper tonight at 11th Street Precinct.  I got their famous tenderloin – no bun of course, with coleslaw instead of fries, along with a Coors Light.  While it tasted good, my stomach immediately felt off.  This is the problem with becoming primal – you make such tasty, delicious food at home that eating out is a let down!  It’s rare to eat something at a restaurant that tastes as good as what you  make at home.

Look at these fantastic recipes I made this week:

Avocado Boats These things were super delicious.  Essentially you make chicken salad with bacon, red onion, grape tomatoes, mayo (I used full fat Hellmans because last time I made homemade with olive oil it turned out a little janky.  I need to try it with avocado oil), garlic, salt and pepper.  The recipe also called for “2 Tbs. Peace and Love.”  That confused me.  I thought maybe it was a spice mix I hadn’t heard of, so I Googled it to no avail.  Eventually, by going back to the the recipe site, I realized that “peace and love” are in all her recipes.  They are but FIGURATIVE  ingredients.  I added a bunch of love but no peace, and it still turned out good.  Then you make guacamole, scoop it into the avocado shells, and cover it with the chicken salad.  The guacamole instructions in the recipe were a little sparse, so I used this tried and true recipe, and it turned out fantastic.  I scooped the leftover guac and chicken salad into a small container, covered it with plastic wrap, smooshing out all the air and then ate the leftovers 2 days later. They still tasted fantastic.  Next time I might leave out the avocado shell part – the presentation is pretty, but inconvenient.  I got guac everywhere, trying to scoop out the last delicious tidbits.

From the week we had lots of leftover meat – hamburger, pork chops, chicken, so I made this Chipotle Slaw to add the meat smörgåsbord.  It was, to quote the annoying movie star/secret agent chick on Archer, AMAZING!  It was very simple – cabbage, chipotle pepper, lime, apple cider vinegar, honey, cilantro and salt.  I topped mine with some avocado and grape tomatoes and ate it with a cold leftover grass-fed hamburger.  It was so tasty.

So, now you begin to understand my difficulty.  We are spoiled from too much good food at home to appreciate eating out.  Of course, eating at home is way better for you and less expensive, but eating out used to be so much fun.  You get to go out and see and be seen and mingle and socialize.  I guess we’re going to have to widen our comfort zone and start bringing people into our house and make them eat our delicious food.  And we’ll make them play cards with us.

Cooking/Recipes, Uncategorized

Love You Long Time Cupcakes

heather

Despite the title of this post, I am still PRIMAL!  I slipped a bit yesterday, admittedly.  I participated in the Junior Achievement Bowl-a-thon, which always involves lots of unhealthy behavior.  I did pretty good except for I caved in to stress and my frustration with bad service at our supper joint and ate quite a few handfuls of popcorn.  I also drank more Bud Light than is good for me.  It didn’t even taste good, but, you know how it is at stuff like that.

Anyway, today I am back on the wagon.  Timmy Tee made me a delicious primal breakfast of bacon, eggs, and avocado.  For lunch I had a delicious curry from Exotic Thai – full of eggplant, basil, green pepper, and pork.  So tasty.

I’ve been browning some bananas for a week in anticipation of making this amazing-sounding recipe: Love You Long Time Chocolate Cupcakes.  I finally got them made this afternoon.  I ignored the instructions to use cupcake liners.  In my experience, the cake always sticks to the liners, so you end up picking cake off of paper.  It was not a good idea to ignore those instructions in this instance, however.

I don’t know if you’ve ever cooked with coconut oil.  Well, I have.  Twice.  Both times the results tasted good but were incredibly, well, moist?  Greasy?  The oil is just so oily!  The cupcakes looked awesome from the top, but when I turned over the muffin tin to dump out the cakes, only the top 2/3rds came out.  They didn’t have enough adhesiveness to stick together, and when I picked up the tops, you could tell that they wanted to fall apart into cakey goo so bad.

I popped them in the fridge while I made the dark chocolate chip & coconut milk ganache.  Then I proceeded to further mangle the cupcakes by trying to dip the tops in the ganache.  it was a rather messy affair to say the least.  Once ganached, I stuck the cupcakes in the freezer.  Hopefully they will firm up in there.  I love cold chocolate, too, so I think these might turn out to be pretty tasty.  The bits I scraped out of the bottom of the muffin tin were pretty damn tasty, at least.

Here is a photo of my sad, little cakes.

I’ll let you know how they taste frozen.  If anyone has any tips for cooking with coconut oil, I’m all ears!

Cooking/Recipes, Product Reviews, Uncategorized

It’s my Hundred and Elleventieth Birthday!!

heather

No, it’s really just my 35th birthday.  And actually it was on Thursday.  But at my current place of employment, you get your birthday off, or at least a day off relatively close to your birthday.  So I took yesterday off.

It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a day off without some specific reason such as, one of my brothers is in town, we’re going to Chicago, Tim has the day off, etc.  I forgot how nice it can be to just spend the day by yourself to do whatever you want.  And I did.

I made myself a delicious breakfast of sautéed kale & red peppers, topped with avocado (10 for $10 at HyVee this week!) and two fried eggs.  Then I did a little online shopping.  At Sephora, you get a free gift when you place an order during your birthday month.  You can also always find extra promo codes to get even more free stuff when you order.  Plus I had over 100 bonus points, so I got to upgrade a sample.  So, I got a ton of stuff for $50.  Way more stuff than I need, especially considering I got one of the Sephora sampler kits.  They are always so fun – so many different things to try.  With makeup, I am definitely on a pendulum, I will go for months, trying to pare down my makeup kit to the bare essentials, trying to minimalize and simplify my daily routine and life.  I will start to feel suffocated by all the little bottles and tubes and cases clogging up my bathroom shelf.  So I will purge the stuff I don’t love – giving it away or tossing it.  Then, eventually, I will swing back the other way, buying way more makeup than I can use before it gets bad.  Maybe this swing is because I turned 35.  I think it probably has more to do with me working in an office that is predominantly women, so there is A LOT of estrogen floating around, making me extra girly.  Also, since I’m trying to eat primally, I fully expect to lose 5 more pounds at least, which means it’s silly to buy any new clothes right now because I will likely need new stuff in a month or two.  So my shopping outlet (since I just bought a new purse) is forced in the makeup direction.  Enough about that.

What else did I do?  I tried to order some pork from Geest Farms, a local farm that raises non-CAFO pigs.  They are out of pretty much everything, so I have to wait until they kill some more pigs in a couple of weeks.  Poor pigs.  Poor, delicious pigs.

I did some tech maintenance – figured how to listen to the iTunes radio stations on my iPhone. Just copy the URL from the iTunes station to a text document in Dropbox, open Dropbox on your phone, click the link, and you are listening to All 90s All The Time in seconds flat.  Of course to get that to work, I had to install Dropbox on both sides of my laptop (the Windows side and the Linux side).  I also found out about East Village Radio from my bro, so I downloaded that on my phone and got to listen to some cool tunes from NYC.

I sifted through pictures on my phone that I want to try painting in watercolor and ordered them online from Walgreens.  I love their 5 X 7 prints, but they are pricey.  I found a coupon online (SITE40) and saved 40% on the prints!

Finally I rounded out the morning by doing a little eye-glass frame shopping at WarbyParker.com.  This is a website where you can pick out up to 5 frames, the company will ship them to you for free, you can try them out for 5 days, and then ship them back for free. If you like any of the frames, the frames plus lenses are only $95!! Well, since I have such a strong prescription, mine would be an extra $30, so $125.  That is SOOOOO cheap for fashionable glasses.  I have 5 frames coming my way to try out.

I did a quick PEM workout (plank, pushups, and pullups), hopped in the shower, and then headed out for an 11:15 at Lillee Leighton Salon for my shellac polish. The shellac polish is is made out of polymers that harden (almost like acrylic) under a special light.  The polish stays on for at least 2 weeks.  The application process is a little time-consuming because there are 3 or 4 coats that need to be put on.  Also Kristin, the girl who did my polish, is very fastidious about not getting polish on my skin, which is hard to do because my nails are pretty short.  She did a great job, and she only charges $20.  Plus, with the first visit, you get cuticle/nail oil which you are supposed to apply 2 times per day.  Supposedly it soaks through the polish and moisturizes and strengthens the nail underneath. Kristin even told me how to remove the polish myself.  While she only charges $5 for removal (other salons charge up to $15), she said you can do it at home the “ghetto” way.  Soak cotton balls in pure acetone, and leave them on the nail for 10 minutes.  She said you can wrap tin foil around the nail to keep the cotton ball sealed on there.  When you pull the ball off, the polish should come with it.  Anyway, the polish looks great.  You can see a picture in my Instagram feed to the right.  Next time I have it done, however, I will be more careful about doing a pre-manicure at home.  I didn’t do a great job filing my nails, and I didn’t have my cuticles pushed back to where I wanted them.  So, that’s my advice.  If you’re going to get this done – prep your nails first (or get the full manicure with the shellac polish).  Also, it sounds as if a lot of places don’t do the whole process correctly (I think there was a basecoat, a very light buff, a removal of the buffed materials with an alcohol swab, two coats of polish, then a removal of “stickiness” with another alcohol swab, then the cuticle oil.  And between each coat, the nails went into the “oven” to bake), so be sure to go to a place that is doing it correctly.

After the polish I had lunch with a friend at Bent River (burger, no bun for me, of course).  Then I headed to Target.  I spent some time in the optical shop, looking at frames.  I found two I liked, but just the frames alone were $150 +.  I went home and found them online for 1/2 that.  I’ll have to see how the WarbyParkers do and then decide what to do.

I also transferred my generic Ortho Tri-Cyclen script from Walgreens to Target.  FYI, anyone who is on that script, Walgreen’s generic is $27/month, but Target’s is NINE DOLLARS!!  Tim and I are very frustrated with Walgreens right now because they delayed in getting doctor’s approval for Tim’s asthma inhaler, which led to a frenzied Friday night while we tried to track down a doctor to fill his prescription (which we had filled at CVS where the pharmacy staff was super nice).

I also shopped for some summer stuff (for our trip to Ocracoke).  I know it’s not for 5 months, but I’m super excited already.  I got a sun hat and a sun dress.  The hat is a keeper (so says Tim), but the sun dress makes me look preggers, so it’s going back.  Hopefully I can find something better in the next 5 months…

I got home around 3:30 and started to pull out the ingredients for Corned Beef and Cabbage, only to realize that we bought a beef brisket, not a corned beef brisket (I had to Google it to see if there was a difference).  I searched online for a good beef brisket recipe, but I just found tons of them that wanted a lot of sugar and/or whole bottles of chili sauce.  I finally hit upon this Paula Deen recipe.  I left out the sugar and instead rubbed the brisket with some honey.  I didn’t have any beef broth, so I used chicken broth.  The brisket wasn’t ready in time for supper last night, but we did try a little slice when it finished up.  It was spicy and delicious.  I can’t wait to eat it today.

Then I opened a bottle of wine and started watching Beautiful Girls.  It was a very laid-back movie, which totally fit my mood.

Thanks to my employer for giving me the day off.  I had a wonderful, enjoyable day.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Primal Days 19 and 20

heather

Disclaimer:  I am writing this post whilst watching Start Trek: The Next Generation, so this post may not be as sharp and entertaining as usual.

I neglected to make a post yesterday.  Hmm… yesterday was so long ago.  What happened yesterday?  I had lunch at Exotic Thai – red curry with pork, to be exact.  It was delicious but gave me brief, sharp, shooting pains in my stomach.  I cannot account for it, since the curry was comprised of all the same types of ingredients I’ve been eating steadily for the past 2.5 week.  Since I didn’t eat the accompanying rice, the lunch was rather small – just the small bowl of curry.  Consequently, I was hungry all afternoon. The only primal snacks I had were pecans, walnuts, and almonds, so I ate a bunch of them.  I probably consumed way too many calories.

For supper we went to Azteca.  Actually, we went to Los Agaves first, but the hostess sat us by the kitchen entrance, in the north-facing section of the restaurant.  We looked at each other, looked at the kitchen entrance, replete with wash buckets and mops, and got up and walked out.  We went to Azteca instead.  Our table was much better, albeit louder, as there was a mariachi band playing a few feet away.  I ordered the fajita taco salad.  It was pretty good, but the steak was a little gristly.

Today I was supposed to do more IF (intermittent fasting).  I lasted until about 10AM when I made another delicious shake of blueberries, coconut milk, shredded coconut, pecans, dark cocoa powder, a date and ice cubes.

For lunch we went to 11th Street Precinct.  I had one of their delicious grilled tenderloins (bunless, of course), topped with lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mustard.  I got cole slaw instead of fries.  It was very tasty.

We ate supper at home, and it was delicious.  Based on a recipe I found here, I boiled a chicken neck and back in the leftover chicken stock from Thursday night’s dinner, adding carrots, onions, celery, garlic, and parsley to the stock.  We brought it to an almost boil and then simmered it for 2 hours.  Once the stock was close to being finished, I sautéed the onions and garlic in butter, then added chopped up carrots and celery, sautéing for a few minutes more.  Then we added the strained chicken stock, some chopped cabbage and thyme and basil, simmering the soup for 25 minutes, at which point we added the leftover chicken from Thursday’s supper.  We let the whole batch cook for 10 minutes more.

It turned out super good – one of the best batches of chicken soup I’ve ever made.  Yum.

For exercise, I did a modified PEM workout today and also walked to the QCBC bulletin board on the bike path and updated the board.

Tomorrow is my last official day of the diet, but I plan on keeping up with the primal principles.