Paleo Lessons: Week 9

Oops, I lost track of how many weeks it's been since I started Paleo. I thought it was week 11. That seems like a good thing to me, actually.

Try new foods. Even if they're scary, hard to pronounce, or you don't know what they are. Went with Super A and Abbs to a gluten free Mediterranean place for lunch on Friday and didn't know what I was doing when I ordered, so I asked the gal behind the counter for recommendations. I ended up with steak, feta, carrots, and cauliflower in a gluten free wrap with a lemon sauce and a balsamic sauce on the side. It was amazing and I can't wait to go back.

Before a race, banana pancakes are the perfect food. I made some for a race on Saturday, they were devoured, and now I'm all set to make them before the next race, too. The race went well, look for a post soon.

Listen to your body. If you can't keep your eyes open, get some sleep. If you're so sore that standing up or sitting down causes you pain, go easy or take the day off. You'll feel so much better the next day, and your body will perform better than if you had forced a hard workout on yourself. It's not worth it.

Eat when you're hungry, don't when you're not. If you're trying to loose body fat, try to avoid nuts and fruit. If you're trying to stay fuller for longer, eat more fat. This is something I know I need to work on. Salad dressing makes me nervous though. Maybe I'll compromise a bit.

Empty jars are your friends. So is bacon and bacon grease.

Slow Cooker Chili

Alright, here's one of the recipes I keep talking about but not actually posting: the slow cooker chili recipe.

I don't know about you, but the homemade chili I'm used to eating is full of beans. It's delicious, except for the whole "beans being legumes and legumes not being Paleo" thing. I wanted a recipe that I could whip together in the morning before a long days of work and classes and enjoy when I got back that night, ready for an easy "no-prep" meal. Preferably a warm one well suited to fall and the strangely chilly weather we're having here (no complaints, I like it). The original recipe is Melissa's from Clothes Make the Girl. She has instructions on how to make the chili on the stove, but that won't help me. On a whim, I pulled out my slow cooker (a nice, sturdy, old thing that I love) and used it for the first time. The prep work consisted only of adding everything to the pot, clearing a space for it on the counter, and writing a note so no one would accidentally burn themselves or unplug it.

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons oil (coconut, EVOO, your choice)
• 2 onions, diced (medium-large are best)
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp dried oregano leaves
• 1 tbsp red chili pepper
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1.5 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1tsp salt
• 6 oz tomato paste
• 14.5 oz fire-roasted chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup broth (use beef for the best results, but I used chicken)
• 1 cup water (possibly less, need to test again, when in doubt use a little bit more)
• 2 lb ground beef

Combine all the seasonings in a small bowl and mix. Dice the onions (Abbs taught me how to do this without loosing a finger) and put them in the bottom of your slow cooker. Add the tomatoes, the tomato paste, the meat, and the seasonings.

Mix it all together (using your hands works best). Add the broth and water. 

Turn the slow cooker on to medium heat (make sure at least medium if using raw meat like I did) and let it cook for 8+ hours. I think mine sat for closer to 9 or 10 and came out fine.

Notes:

The original recipe Melissa wrote calls for twice the amount of red pepper and cumin. I'm not that used to eating spicy foods, so it was too hot for me. I still need to test the halved amounts of chili pepper and cumin to see what the heat is like. Also, it freezes well, and it's pretty good in a breakfast omelet.

In other news...

I haven't made any of the new recipes yet, and I still need to write up the one for the chili, but I'd rather give it another go before I post it to see if I can get it to be a little less spicy.  Last night was zucchini carbonara night. Abbs was really impressed at how easy it was to make. She's keeping track of what meals we make for during classes, I think, so she knows what's good and easy and quick. Tomorrow I'm making damn fine chicken again (another classic), and tonight she's making turkey burgers I believe. So much yummy food.

I think I've mentioned earlier that right now I have plantar fasciitis (PF) and am avoiding running. It's been going on 2 months since the last time I ran, and although I'm antsy to get back to it, I'm also finding that I actually do enjoy biking and swimming. Yay! There's a challenge going on at the pool where each length (25 yards) counts as a mile, and they want to see who can swim the farthest away from the pool. I got roped into it by someone else from the tri team, and we roped in someone else, with all of us hoping to get to Hawaii. Hawaii is nearly 5000 miles away from here. Right now I think I'm hovering around 1300 miles (respectable!) with a little over a half a month to make it the rest of the way (not happening, I'd like to maintain my status as second place holder though). My average biking speed has increased, too, I think, which is also exciting. There's a race this weekend that I'm doing as a relay, and I'll be doing the bike leg. It's only a sprint, so it should be pretty easy.

Paleo Lessons: Week 8

Week 8? How on earth is this week 8 already? It seems like much longer and much less than that at the same time.

Here's what I've learned in the past seven days:

You will on occasion buy too much food. It's somewhat inevitable. It'll happen. And some of it will go bad before you get a chance to use it (like an entire package of butternut squash did over last weekend when I was away grr...). The upside is, when you make your food, you'll have options. Abbs, my newest cooking buddy, and I didn't coordinate as well as we could have, and we ended up with an extra zucchini and some panchetta that we didn't quite have plans for. So Wednesday night when I made cauliflower pizza, we ended up throwing the panchetta on top (a very good idea). Thursday, when she made green beans with coconut chips, it turned into a stir-fry and in went the zucchini!

Read up on spices before you use them. I used to think I had 8 year old taste buds when it came to spicey food. It's something I have to remind Super A of on a quasi-regular basis. I made slow cooker chili this week and it called for a variety of spices I didn't own and didn't know how to use. So I followed the recipe, and it ended up a bit hotter than I normally would like (cue runny nose). It was good though, and not too hot for me to enjoy. Then Abbs made soup. I don't know what kind of soup it was or what she put in it, but it was spicy! I let it sit for a while, thinking that if the temperature cooled down I'd be able to eat it without feeling like my throat was on fire. Oh nay nay. She and I figured out later that the spiciness actually got stronger the longer it sat. I gave up halfway through my bowl and went back to the chili. Now I've decided I have 6 year old taste buds, and that I really need to know what the spices are going to do to the dish before I add them.

It is easier to cook with a buddy. I already knew this from cooking with Super A, but it's that valuable of a lesson. If you're already making x-amount of food, double (or triple) it, and you get multiple meals for the same amount of work. By sharing those meals with a buddy, it means you don't have to do the clean up (at least in my kitchen) for that meal, and your friend will probably make dinner the next night. It's twice the food for half the work. (Eh, don't do the math on that, I'm not entirely sure myself). It also means you might find yourself eating foods you wouldn't normally choose. With Super A, I eat tomatoes and avocado on my salad. With Abbs, I eat (as previously mentioned) spicier food than normal. Whatever you make probably tastes better, too, if you're trying to impress someone (be it friend or more-than-a friend). It also might mean a night of leftovers - the already cooked kind of leftovers, not the "what the heck can I make out of an eggplant and three sausages" kind of leftovers.

I think that's about it for this week (that's it? That's a lot!), so I hope you have a good weekend! I know I plan to!

Upcoming Recipes

I know, the posts and recipes have been sparse lately. That's due partially to me working longer hours to build up enough for a "day off" so I can go see my family and partially because I have a new co-chef buddy, Abbs. She's been exploring Costa Rica for the past few weeks and just decided to go Paleo. The place where she's staying until the fall doesn't have a very good kitchen, so we're buddying up and using mine.

Between the two of us, we've made some really delicious recipes this past week. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to write them up and post them for the reasons mentioned above. Don't worry though, I'm working on it. Be on the lookout for a slow-cooker chili, a chocolate cake based off of fruit, a meal that includes mahi mahi and veggie stir fry, and possibly a soup.

Cranberry Salad with Chicken

Note the title. This is not a recipe for chicken salad, but rather salad with chicken in it.

Ingredients:

• Romaine lettuce, spinach, or your preferred salad greens
• Dried cranberries
• Flax seeds
• Chicken (cooked)
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cheese (optional)

Rinse the salad greens and tear into appropriately sized pieces. Add chicken and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Add flax seeds and dried cranberries and cheese. Enjoy!

Butternut Squash Noatmeal

Ah, oatmeal. That good ol' stick to your ribs, totally not Paleo breakfast food. Best made by a parent on a stove on a cold Saturday morning, complete with hot chocolate and snow outside. Also highly enjoyed by children when it's the instant oatmeal with sugar eggs that dissolve into dinosaurs when hot water is added.

Instant oatmeal. I shudder slightly at those words (despite consuming plenty of it myself in the past). Society, you're doing it wrong.

Last week I started thinking about how delicious oatmeal is and that it's one of those meals I still miss occasionally. So when I went to the grocery store, I had to get some butternut squash. I know what you're thinking - those two things have nothing in common, what are you talking about, Jenna? I'm talking about noatmeal!

I first saw the idea on Mark's Daily Apple. His recipe calls for a banana, 3 eggs, a couple handfuls of nuts, nut butter, and a food processor. That sounds like a lot of work for someone who's looking for a quick and easy meal in the morning (and doesn't particularly want eggs - not blasphemy, it happens to the best of us). I liked the idea though, so I kept looking around. Most of the recipes called for bananas. I love bananas. Sounds perfect, right? Well, Super A just told me that bananas have something like 27 grams of carbs per 100 grams, and I know they're packed with sugar - a lot of recipes that call for bananas say adding more sugar is optional. Plus I like my sweet treats at the end of the day, which usually involve a mashed banana. Plus I'm trying to get more veggies as part of my daily food intake. Pumpkin noatmeal sounds good, but they don't have pumpkins (canned or regular) at my Trader Joe's yet.

But they have butternut squash. Already cut up butternut squash. Easy to cook butternut squash chunks.

It probably would have cooked quicker if I had cut the cubes smaller, but it worked pretty well. I sauteed my squash chunks in a frying pan over low-low medium heat for (accidentally) an hour. I believe they're supposed to be done after about 15 minutes, but I was cleaning up some stuff and forgot. Luckily they didn't burn, the heat was low enough. I dumped the chunks into a container, mashed them up, and put them in the fridge for the night. Cooking the squash is the main prep needed for this recipe.

Ingredients*:

• 1 cup butternut squash, cooked and mashed
• 1 cup almond milk
• 2 "shakes" (1-2 tbsp) almond flour
• 2 eggs
• Handful of chopped walnuts
• Cinnamon (I used lots)

Put the squash, almond milk, and nuts/nut flour into a saucepan on medium heat and stir until combined and warm. Add the egg and stir until mixture is uniform and cooked (3-5 minutes). Remove from heat and add cinnamon and more nuts if desired. I sprinkled my noatmeal with cinnamon, stirred it in, and then sprinkled it again.

It's good hot (like regular oatmeal) or chilled in the fridge for a while (like pumpkin pie). Enjoy!

*This recipe could easily be halved or doubled. The amounts listed were sufficient to fill me up completely for a couple of hours. Also, I don't actually know exactly how much I used of each ingredient as I didn't measure. (Come on, when you're running around in the morning would you measure, or just say "Hmmm, this looks like a good amount of that" and move on?) This is more of a guideline, adjust as needed. Start with less almond milk and add if it looks too dry. With the cinnamon it was sweet enough that I didn't feel the need to add honey.