Category: Paleo

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Red Food, Magic Tea, and Rendering

heather

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. 🙂

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

A Moroccan New Year’s Eve – Get it???

heather

Did you get my joke there?  Instead of a “Rockin'” NYE, I said a “Moroccan” NYE!  Tim has already declared 2015 the year of the bad joke after I made some comment this morning about, “If this kitchen’s Moroccan, don’t come a knockin.”

So, yes, I made a Moroccan dish last night – Moroccan-Style Lamb Meatballs, to be precise.  They turned out pretty tasty (the sauce especially) but my favorite lamb meatball recipe is still this one.  These meatballs weren’t a lot of work, per say, but they did take a sh!tload of spices – thirteen to be exact.  And when it was all said and done, you couldn’t really taste them in the end product.  The meatballs might be more flavorful today though.

That’s how we celebrated our New Year’s Eve. I found a NYE Dance Party mix on iTunes radio, and Tim and I cleaned the kitchen, cooked, cleaned the kitchen again, made a drink, watched Gilmore Girls while crocheting a scarf, made another drink, watched The Labyrinth, and then went to bed at like 11PM.  It was actually a really enjoyable night (from the perspective of two complete homebodies).  And as a bonus, I feel great today!

I tried another new recipe this week:  Oven Baked Chowder.  Although this recipe is expensive (1.5 lbs of tilapia was about $15), this one is a definite keeper.  The chowder turned out super flavorful and delicious.  Next time I make it, however, I will cook it in our dutch oven.  We ran out of room in the 8 X 11 pan.  Also, I would add a whole cup of coconut milk to make the sauce even more creamy.

How was your New Year’s Eve?  Any big plans or goals for 2015?  Tim and I discussed last night that we are going to try to reign in our eating out to only 2 times per week. It will help us save money and calories.  That’s about it for us!

Hope you are having a great January 1, 2015.  The future is now, Man!!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

PORKIN!

heather

Ha – gotchya! This post isn’t about what you thought it was about. You pervert.

One of the benefits and drawbacks of buying a whole hog is that you have tons of pork to eat.  I love pork, but we probably eat too much of it.  We need to widen our horizons as far as meat is concerned, but it’s hard to do when you have 100 pounds of pork chilling in the freezer.

I used a few pounds of it this week in a couple of new recipes:

1.  Beyond the Bite Hawaiian Pork Roast.  This recipe was very easy to make, and the flavor of the roast was delicious!  However, the cabbage got a little overcooked, so its texture and color were a little unappetizing; although, the actual taste of it was good.  Even though the recipe only calls for 3 T of ginger, the whole roast had a really nice ginger tone to it.

2. Easy Glazed Pork Chops.  This introduced me to a new way of cooking pork chops. We usually either grill them or fry them on the stove.  With this recipe, however, you cook them on the stove for 4 minutes on each side and then bake them for 6 minutes.   They end up cooked perfectly!  I would definitely make pork chops this way again, but I would not make the glaze.  Tim HATES vinegar, and this sauce was super vinegary and made the whole house smell like vinegar. I personally liked the flavor, but I won’t subject Tim to the vinegar scent again.

And today is Christmas.  Tim and I are going to head out for a run shortly, and then we’re going to play some cribbage, eat some homemade stew, draw, bake cookies, watch some Lord of the Rings, and crochet some slippers.  Sounds like a perfect Thursday in my opinion!

Oh!  And one more thing to note.  Some friends of mine and I decided to do another Primal Challenge in January. It’s kind of become a tradition at this point. I originally started the primal diet 3 years ago in January, and for the past 2 years, I have re-done the challenge to help myself get back on track and to help introduce some friends to the diet.  This year we are making it a little more official. I set up a Facebook Group here for us to communicate and encourage each other.  We are doing it 1/11 to 1/31.  If you are interested in joining up, hit me up on Facebook. I’m excited to see how it goes (and I’m excited to have a strong excuse to turn down delicious (but super unhealthy) treats at work!).

I hope you are enjoying your day off and can get outside and revel in the cold sunshine.  Thanks for reading!!

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Movies, Paleo, Product Reviews, Uncategorized

Swedish meatballs, yoga pants, and crocheted slippers.

heather

Chris Kresser links to the best recipes!  I found this recipe for Paleo Swedish Meatballs last weekend in one of his posts.  Holy cow.  These turned out sooooo delicious!  They were a lot of work for a weeknight meal, as you need to cook the meatballs in batches on the stove top until they are all done.  But they are so worth the effort.  Here are a couple of notes – I used a 2 inch scoop for the first batch of meatballs, and I had a really hard time turning them without them falling apart. I scaled down to a 1.5″ scoop after that, and those meatballs were much easier to handle, and they cooked much more evenly.  Also, I was 85% sure that the “gravy” would not turn into gravy.  It was super runny all the way up until I added the 3rd tablespoon of tapioca starch. Then, magically, it started to firm up to gravy consistency.  So rich and tasty.

For a side dish I made roasted brussel sprouts because I found some local ones at The Food Hub for 2.99/lb.  I used this recipe as a guide; however, instead of making the glaze, we poured the gravy over the cooked sprouts.  I have to say, we were not super happy with how these turned out.  They were very dry (maybe I didn’t add enough oil?).  So, when we stored the leftovers, we mixed the sprouts and the meatballs and gravy together. The sprouts marinated in that rich gravy overnight and were super moist and tasty when re-heated.

I also tried this recipe last week: Crockpot Ropa Viega with Cuban Style Rice.  This turned out OK.  Tim and I both thought the dish was a little over-spiced, and the meat didn’t turn out as tender as I hoped.  Tim ate the leftovers with white rice, however, which cut down the spice level a bit, and he said that was really good. However, this recipe did provide us with supper and enough leftovers for two more meals.

So on to my next piece of news.  For our anniversary Tim got me an amazing pair of yoga capri leggings from Onzie.  I wore them to an hour and 15 minute yoga class, and they kept me very cool (the fabric is really thin). I also wore them running, and they were very comfortable.  He got me the Prizm print.  It a cacophony of patterns, and it gives you something really interesting to look at while in downward dog. I don’t know if yoga pants are the proper dristi for yoga, but looking at them made me happy, so I think Yoga would approve.

I start my yoga teacher training class on 1/9, and I feel as if I really need at least one more pair of yoga pants for the class. Unfortunately the prints I really love at Onzie are all sold out of my size.  I’m going to keep my eye on it though.

And finally, the last topic of my post.  Ever since we were little, my mom has made us awesome crocheted slippers (the slippers are courtesy of Mom – the hair is courtesy of Lucent):

IMG_7421

Mom has shown me a couple of times how to make them, but once she is not next to me, I forget how.  So I found this YouTube video on granny squares (the slippers are basically 3 small granny squares stitched into one big granny square).  With his help and a few texts back and forth to Mom, I was able to successfully make all the pieces for a pair of slippers:

IMG_7422

And this is currently where I am stuck. Over the phone, Mom walked me through how to stitch the pieces together, but my first attempt ended very poorly. I was distracted by David Bowie’s hair and other things in The Labyrinth and didn’t have the pieces lined up well enough, so they didn’t connect where they should connect.  I’m going to try it one more time, and if that doesn’t work, make Mammacita sew them together for me. 🙂

So that’s my week in a nutshell.  Hope you are having a great Sunday and can get out and enjoy this 40 degree day.  Take some Vitamin D and eat some salmon, and you won’t even miss the sun!

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

How to get fat on the Paleo Diet

heather

I’ve been paleo/primal for 3 years now. I initially lost 18 lbs when I started the paleo diet, and I’ve kept it off for the past 3 years.  I’ll gain a pound or two when I start to loosen up the diet too much, but as soon as I tighten it up, my weight goes back down to my “equilibrium” weight, which is right around 131 pounds.

What are the culprits of the subtle pound creepage?  For me, it’s beer (1 beer = 1 lb), cheese, paleo snacks (Nut Thin crackers and sweet potato chips) and too many paleo baked goods.  The beer and cheese obviously will cause issues, but I think the paleo snacks and baked goods are more insidious. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that since they are “paleo-ish” they are OK to eat.  Well, and I honestly think they are OK in moderation.  It’s just that for me, I have problems with self control.  If I buy a bag of Terra sweet potato chips. I will eat them all over a couple of days – not happy until they are gone.  Same thing with paleo baked goods – when you make a batch of them, you have at least 12 treats hanging around.  12/2 = 6 treats for Tim and 6 treats for me that just HAVE to be eaten over  the course of 2-3 days.  DANGEROUS.

But we had company yesterday, so I used that as an excuse to make these Paleo Pumpkin and Carrot Muffins.  They are kind of a lot of work – the recipe prints out on 3 pages!  However, they are definitely worth it.  They taste like delicious pumpkin pie.  Two notes, however – I had to cook mine 10 minutes longer than the recipe said. I had so much batter that I had to fill the muffin cups 100% instead of 3/4, so I’m sure that’s why they took longer to cook.  Also, I could not find Five Spice Powder anywhere here in Davenport.  So I used a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice and added some turmeric and cayenne pepper. I didn’t even taste the turmeric (but we got all those anitoxidants), but you can taste the cayenne at the back of your throat as the bite goes down the gullet. It adds some interesting dimension to the muffins.

I made another Nomnompaleo recipe yesterday:  Oven-Braised Beef Stew with Carrot, Parsnip, and Lacinato Kale.  This recipe is a tremendous amount of work – you have to cut tons of veggies and then you have to sauté everything separately before adding it to the dutch oven for roasting.  The stew turned out super delicious, however, so it’s totally worth it.

And lastly, to the detriment of my waistline, I tried out this Paleo Pancakes recipe this morning.  I’ve never had great success with paleo pancakes. They are always too thick to cook properly.  Making them is an exercise is frustration.  But sometimes you just want a pancake with lots of butter and maple syrup.  So you keep trying and hoping.  Well, Chris Kresser linked to this recipe a few weeks ago, and I’m so glad he did.  These are by far the best paleo pancakes I’ve ever had. Tim even said you can’t tell they are paleo!  They are just good pancakes – not just good “paleo” pancakes.  This was my first attempt at using plantains, and based on these pancakes, I look forward to adding more of this safe starch to my diet.

I’m excited to have found some new recipes to add to my repertoire, but now I have a fridge full of honey-sweetened muffins and delicious pancakes.  It’s dangerous.  I better do some heavy aerobic exercise to burn off all these carbs today.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Adventures with Harrissa and Reiki

heather

This has been an exciting week! I tried 2 new recipes AND a new alternative health therapy.  Recipes first.

1.  I made Wild Salmon with Avocado Salsa.  I found this recipe in a free magazine, Simply Recipes. I can’t find the recipe online anywhere, which is unfortunate because it’s delicious.  Basically you put a spice rub consisting of olive oil, salt, coriander, cumin, paprika, onion powder and pepper on the salmon, grill the salmon, and then serve it with avocado salsa made of avocado (of course), onion, tomato, hot peppers, cilantro, lime, and olive oil.  I never would have thought that cumin would taste good on salmon, but it was DELICIOUS!!

2. I also made Slow Cooker Harissa Stew.  This was my first time using harissa, and I was hoping I would like it because a little jar of it is $4.99.  But, I was in luck because like it I did!  I was expecting the meat to be balls-out spicy, but it just had a pretty mild, spicy, exotic flavor.  We had it over rice one night and over butternut squash the next day.  The recipe was very easy to make. If I can get my hands on some lamb chops without spending a fortune, I want to try this recipe next.

Besides that I made some old favorites this week – Primal Ham Bone Soup with a smoked ham hock (amazing!) and Instant Banana Bread.

On to the other big news this week, after months of saying, “Reiki sounds really interesting. I’m really curious about it. I should really try it.”  I finally tried it this morning.  For those you are unfamiliar with Reiki, check out this link.

Despite the fact that I’ve talked to a few other people who have had a Reiki treatment, I was still very unsure of what to expect.  Well, here is a brief run-down of my experience.  I chatted with the practitioner for a few minutes, explaining how I heard about Reiki and how I heard about the facility at which she works.  Then we got started.  I laid down on a massage table with a blanket over me.  The practitioner started at the my head, very lightly laying her hands on my head.  She worked her way down the front of my body, very lightly touching me.  At certain points I felt a very strong heat come from her hands. It was super bizarre!  At one point when she was working around my stomach, I saw a dark purple light behind my eyes that faded quickly.  She said purple represents the crown chakra.

When she finished with my front side, she mentioned that my knees absorbed a lot of energy, as did my right ankle and foot.  She said she could tell that I’m a runner and have evidently battered my joints a bit.  Then I rolled over, and she touched a few spots on my back, legs, and feet, and then it was over.

Do I feel any different?  I don’t think so. My hips and quads feel really tired, but I went to a pretty intense vinyasa class last night, and I’m thinkings that’s probably the cause of that.  It was a very interesting experience. I went into the experience with cautious open-mindedness. I’m not sure if I’m a believer in the efficacy of the treatment YET, but she did make several comments that belied a knowledge of things I’ve been thinking about and contemplating – things I did not talk to her about at all.  So, that is definitely mysterious!

My take-away from the experience is that there is a lot more to this world and our existence than we are generally led to believe.

So that’s my update for the week! As always, thank you for reading!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

The Perfect Fall

heather

Like most Sundays, today rather got away from me.  We intended to go for a long bike ride, but we were both whooped. Yesterday we got a couples massage at Indigo Wellness, which was super awesome, but also kind of exhausting somehow.  We also ran yesterday.  And this is our first weekend sans guests in a month, so we felt like taking it easy today.

So we made breakfast at home, talked to both my brothers, bought some grasses and plants for the front beds, ate lunch and froze to death outside at Governors (the mischievous sun disappeared about 3 minutes after we sat down), hit Menards for some more gardening supplies, and then headed home.

Once we got home we planted the grasses in the front bed.  They were 75% off at Home Depot, so we got 4 grasses, 4 sage plants, and 2 perennial flowers for $36!  We figure if they don’t come back next year, we aren’t out much.  If they do come back, I think it’s going to look great out there.  We also pulled out all our plants from our square foot gardens and tilled in a bunch of compost from our bin.  Tim’s going to plant some kale and see how it does over the winter.

It’s been such a pleasant afternoon working the yard, being outside, and spending time with Tim.  It was exactly what I needed.  I’ve been feeling a little high strung lately – I’m sure it’s due to eating too much bad food, drinking too often, and getting out of my exercise routine.  I’m constantly amazed by how big of an impact diet and exercise have on my mental wellbeing.

Speaking of exercise, I also did this yoga video. I love Rebecca Pachecho.  Her pacing and instruction is great, and she’s just really, well, pretty. 🙂  I enjoyed the video, but what I did not enjoy was pulling up my new Beyond Yoga capris constantly.  I ordered them online, and they seemed to fit well initially, but when I do yoga in them they seem to have difficulties containing my arse.  I’m afraid now I have $50 pajama bottoms. 🙁 I need to learn to suck it up and go shopping in real physical stores instead of just shopping online.  Now my only option is to strategically lose 3 lbs off my butt.  On a happy note, I really love the fabric of the pants. It’s super soft.

Tim and I didn’t make it to the grocery store today, but since we hit up the farmers market yesterday, we should be OK. Last night I made Heavenly Paleo Meatloaf (the blog where this recipe was initially posted seems to be out of commission now, but if you want the recipe, let me know) with acorn squash.  The recipe makes 2 huge loafs, so we have leftovers for tonight. I’m going to cook up some brussel sprouts with onions in bacon grease for a side dish.  The brussel sprouts are from our garden. They took allllll summer to grow, and I can’t wait to see how they taste.  We found a random carrot while planting the grasses today, and it was the sweetest, earthiest thing you’ve ever eaten.  Sometimes living in Iowa is allllllright.

So that’s my update, as I’m sitting here in our backyard, mostly super content except for the screaming hellion next door.  Yin and yang, man.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Mourning Summer

heather

We had an absolutely beautiful summer here in Iowa this year.  Some would say we didn’t have hot enough weather, but those some are retarded. It was gorgeous most of the time.  While we didn’t take a normal, long summer vacation, we did get to spend tons of time outside biking, running, and relaxing.

But now it’s over.  It’s Fall. I love Fall, but it means winter is coming. It means I’ll lose my tan. It means I’ll become vitamin D deficient. It means that I’ll be coooooold.  It means summer is over.  But, to be philosophical about it, there is no sense in resisting the inevitable. I’m just going to embrace it. I may end up actually going to a tanning bed, but winter will not beat me this year.

ANYWAY, it’s been an eventful week or so cooking-wise here.  I tried lots of new recipes – some good, some bad, and I will tell you all about them forthwith post haste.

Broiled Zucchini:  An excellent friend of mine at work, Lisa,  gave me loads of zucchini and acorn squash. I attempted to use some in this recipe.  I don’t know if I sliced the zucchini too thinly or what, but I burned most of these by over-baking them for like a minute or two.  In my opinion there are easier and more fool-proof ways to eat zucchini!

Fermented Gingered Carrots: Ever since my foray into water kefir, I’ve been getting more interested in fermenting.  I ran across this recipe in my RSS feed, and for some reason it sounded really good to me. I tried it, and it did turn out tasty! It’s mighty salty, but we think it would be good mixed in with other stuff – like in a coleslaw or potato salad.  It was super easy to make, too.

Beet Kvass: Since the carrots turned out so good, I thought I would try another fermented veggie – beets!  This looked absolutely beautiful in the jar. It was the most perfect shade of red I have ever seen.  However, when I took off the coffee filter covering, there was a layer of grey scum over the top.  It didn’t look too dangerous, but to be on the safe side we pitched it and decided to make it again, this time using an airlock cover.  After pitching it, we did some research and found out that the mold is harmless and can be skimmed off.  🙁  Bummer!  At least we will know for next time. I have another  batch brewing (this time with the airlock to be safe).  We’ll see how it turns out.

And here are two recipes that I’ve made before but that are sooooo good, they deserve another mention.

Lemon Basil Cookies: We had our annual “Wellness Week” at work this week, and that means we have a “healthy” potluck. Since most people are confounded by that restriction, they end up bringing fruit. 🙂  I made these cookies and Chunky Monkey muffins to help people see that gluten-free treats can be super tasty.  They were a HUGE hit. I had 5 requests for the recipe, and several more people commented on how good they were.  Tim said they taste like gourmet cookies.  My green basil is flowering (much to the delight of our local bumble bees), so I used purple basil that my mom gave me that was planted later in the season. These turned out sooo good. Tim and I also broke down and bought a real zester.  I cannot believe how much easier it makes zesting.  It makes me wonder how much better my life would be if I caved and spent $30 for an immersion blender…

Meat Sauce: I can’t link to this recipe because it’s not listed for free online. I got it from the 21 Day Sugar Detox.  It’s a combination of ground meat, celtic sea salt, garlic, tomato, and basil.  I made it and put it over butternut squash. It was soooooo tasty, and it made the kitchen smell delicious.  We reheated the leftovers and ate them with two over-easy eggs on top.  Super delicious.

And there you go. I didn’t do much meal planning this week because we still had a bunch of groceries in the house come Sunday.  And thanks to Lisa, I have a tons of safe starches on hand, and thanks to my free spending at the Farmer’s Market last Saturday, we have tons of ground meat on hand.  And with those two things, you can make tons of quick and easy meals.  Which is a very good thing because Tim has been crazy busy at work (working 12 hour days), and I’ve been busy trying to ramp up my yoga practice so that I don’t look like an inexperienced fool when I start yoga teacher training in January!  I’m trying to get in 5 days of yoga (2 classes at Indigo and the rest at home using YouTube videos like this one), 2 days of weights, and 2 days of running.  I’m running out of time though!!  I also signed up for 2 edX classes (Science of Happiness and Behavioral Medicine: The Key to Better Health), both of which I am super interested in, but have yet to find the time to actually DO!

Tim and I discussed this predicament and decided we need to quit our jobs so we have the appropriate amount of time to pursue our hobbies and interests.  If any of my readers are wealthy and want to become patrons, let me know!!!

I hope you have a great Saturday night, and thanks for reading!

 

 

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Liver Bomb

heather

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, by using www.paleotrack.com to track my food intake, I’ve realized that it’s really hard to get the RDA of minerals.  In an attempt to rectify this (without having to take 10 different pills each morning), I’m trying to incorporate more liver in our diet.  I ground up a pound of chicken liver in the food processor, and every time I made a ground-meat dish this week, I added in 1-3 tablespoons of liquefied liver.  It looked pretty gross, but you can’t really taste it.  I didn’t use up all the ground liver this way, so I spooned the remainder into ice cube trays and froze it.  This way I can add a cube or two to meat as I cook it.

The vendor at the Farmer’s Market sells the liver in 2 lb batches, so I used the other pound to make Deli Chopped Liver.  First of all, handling liver is pretty disgusting. It’s red, bloody, and looks like huge leeches.  Secondly, it took about 4 days for the liver and onion smell to get out of the house.  Thirdly, the resulting product was just OK.  I only ate an appreciable amount the evening I came home from having a couple of drinks with some friends.  Deli Chopped Liver is the kind of thing that just doesn’t really sound good until you’ve lowered your natural defenses with some alcohol.  Fourthly, I took some up to my parents’ so that my Dad, who likes and will try everything, could try it.  He did not like the looks of it AT ALL.  It is a pretty unappetizing shade of tan, admittedly.  But, trooper that he is, he tried it.  He did not like the taste of it AT ALL either.  He made some weird, “hewwww hoooooo” coughing noise when he ate it.  Consequently, due to the aforementioned reasons, I will never make this recipe ever again. I will just continue to grind up the liver and sneak it into meat dishes. You are forewarned now, if you ever come to my house for hamburgers or meatloaf.

I tried another recipe this week that turned out disappointing: Cauliflower Muffin Bites.  This recipe sounded really good, and I almost always like recipes from www.marksdailyapple.com, but neither Tim nor I were fans of this one.  First of all, it created a ton of dirty dishes – food processor bowl and blade, glass mixing bowl, muffin pan, towel for wringing out the excess water, etc.  And the resulting product did not have a ton of flavor; it was pretty bland.  It wasn’t worth the effort, IMHO.  This morning, however, I broke up 4 of the muffins and sauteed them in some bacon grease with more salt & pepper, and some cinnamon.  We ate it with scrambled eggs doused with hot sauce.  That was pretty tasty.

I tried another new recipe that was a roaring success:  Southwestern Frittata.  I printed this recipe out ages ago but just never got around to trying it.  The recipe seemed so simple and basic – how could it be THAT great?  Well, I finally tried it this week, and Tim and I absolutely LOVED it!!  It is super easy to make, uses ingredients I almost always have on hand, and it makes A LOT.  We got at least 3 meals out of this.  This will definitely go into our regular rotation.

And there’s my recipe update for the week.  We did good eating at home this week, but for some reason we still have a lot of food in the fridge!  I think I might be able to get by without a major grocery store trip until mid next week.  Oh!  At the Farmer’s Market I picked up some really nice-looking beets.  I’m going to try my hand at Beet Kvass.  I’m excited to see how it turns out.  My water kefir is doing amazing (I’ll write another post on that later), so I think my fermenting luck has turned.

Hope you have a great Sunday.  It’s 75 and sunny here in Iowa.  Tim and I have tons of plans for relaxing today (biking and sitting outside by a fire).  I can’t wait. 🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo

Scones!

heather

Scones.  Yum.  My friend, Marta, and I LOVE Panera scones, especially the ones with that powdered sugar glaze.  They are all sorts of delicious.  Unfortunately they are not at all paleo.  Consequently, I was forced to make paleo scones for work today.

I tried this recipe for Apple Cinnamon Scones.  My workmates thought it turned out tasty, and I agree in general.  I think I overbaked them, however.  Since they are made with almond flour, they are dark to start with, so it’s very difficult to tell when they are “golden brown.”  Usually when I make paleo desserts I end up under baking them, so I erred the other way and cooked these too long.  BUT they turned out good enough that I’ve eaten 4 of them since last night.  Granted, they are pretty small if you make 16 slices, but still. 🙂  I would definitely make these again, but next time I might add some raisins. I would also like to experiment with making homemade whipped cream.  I think that would be fabulous on top of these scones.

But, as with all paleo desserts, I can’t make them often. I end up eating too much of them.  And today was a day for overeating – lots of scones, Himalayan dark chocolate salted almonds, and Reese’s Pumpkins.  Oh boy.