We made two different paleo pizzas the other night.
One was a meatza, with a hamburger crust. Essentially, you make a flat meatloaf (just hamburger, egg, and spices please, no breadcrumbs) and cook that for a while, then drain before adding your sauce, cheese, and toppings and cooking again. It came out absolutely delicious. We didn't have any sauce on hand, and didn't feel like making any, so we went for simple and layered on slices of heirloom tomatoes topped with cheese, bacon, and hot peppers. It came out better this time than last time; we used Girl Gone Primal's suggestion of a stick blender to mix the crust, and it certainly helps the texture.
For the other pizza we tried a cauliflower crust. It mostly failed, unfortunately. Tasted fine - not too much cauliflower flavor - but I think I over-steamed the cauliflower, underestimated the amount of cheese and egg needed, and then undercooked the crust before adding the toppings. It just came out soggy. We'll have to try it again, though; I think we can do better.
And then, yesterday, we made tuna salad for dinner, and chicken salad to have for lunch today. Those are good ways to eat a head of lettuce, since they make pretty awesome sandwich wraps; plus, we just had a lot of random veggies to eat still. The salads were made with our homemade olive-oil mayo/mustard sauce, and we added diced hot peppers, jingle bell peppers (tiny sweet bell-pepperish things), tomatillos, and steamed eggplant. I really like tomatillos by the way. Never really had them before, but they have a nice citrus flavor.
Now all we have left to cook from last week's CSA pickup is green beans! Well, and fennel, of course. What do you do with fennel? We actually didn't get cucumbers last week; it'd be nice to have another week free of them. We'll find out tomorrow. Eggplant might be my new nemesis, though. There was too much to add to our two salads, and we have a tupperware full of diced, steamed eggplant. Not sure what to do with it yet. Ideas?
Showing posts with label Salad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salad. Show all posts
Friday, September 3, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Basket of veggies
Wow, I guess it's been a while. So much for weekly! Where to start? Well, there was a 'Sauces' cooking class, with more yummy recipes to make. We've gone to the gym a few times. We got another couple veggies baskets; the one shown is this past Saturday's. We had to take a picture this time just because of how much there was! In there you can see a lot of corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, a pattypan squash, butter beans (in the bag), blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, peaches, rainbow chard, a canteloupe, bell peppers, round cucumbers (the three little whitish round things), and a kohlrabi (the spiky thing on the left. Apparently it's like a turnip, and it tastes like broccoli stems.) Whew! I'm a little surprised we got in all into our fridge. By the way, I know they all look small in that picture, but I assure, those are normal-sized ears of corn, and the tomatoes and cucumbers are quite large. By the way, if anyone has any ideas for cucumbers that doesn't include a salad, I would love to hear it!
We did a fondue dinner last night that helped us eat some of that stuff. We used some of our homemade veggie stock along with a few spices as a cooking medium, which was pretty good, although we didn't add enough salt. We chopped up one of the tomatoes, a bell pepper, half a summer squash and half the kohlrabi for cooking, along with some beef and chicken; we had a few sauces to go with it, including mustard, a couple bbq sauces, a habanero cheese dip, and a cucumber tzatziki sauce that came out pretty good (and used a cucumber! yay!) Turns out it was a lot of food, and at the end of the meal we dumped the rest of the chopped up items into the cooking stock and called it a 'soup' which we had for lunch today.
Today I got to experiment with the rest of the kohlrabi, and made kohlrabi and summer squash au gratin with the rest of the habanero cheese. That worked pretty well too, except for the amount of liquid; you really do need heavy cream instead of half-and-half, but I can't find organic heavy cream at any of the grocery stores we go to. The half-and-half at least comes organic, without the carageenan and other crap. We had fun making deviled eggs last week, too. That's a lot of egg, by the way, since we started with two yolk's worth of homemade mayo and just added more and more eggs after that.
Oh my god, I am so sick of salad. We've had salads of some sort or another in our fridge for the past two months! It's an easy way to use veggies, especially the leafy ones, but a girl's gotta have a limit somewhere. We've made the cucumber-tomato-mint salad for three weeks in a row, and it's tasty stuff, but I'm so tired of it. We're going to try to make tomato soup tomorrow as an alternative tomato meal; I'm betting it'll be good, and it looks fairly easy to make. We have some wild rice we've been saving that will go well with it, too.
In other news, I think that 100-day challenge is over, for now. I've had quite a few non-paleo items the past couple weeks, and not really for any special occasion; on top of that, I've lost track of those. But that's ok. Maybe I'll try again when I'm not so busy with other things, and it's not like I've gone back to the SAD (standard american diet.) It's been a few munchkins on one hand, butter beans on the other, and green bean casserole on the gripping hand; then there's the corn. As you can see we got a dozen ears this week; we got a dozen last week, too, and a dozen the week before that. Right now we're cutting it all of the cob and freezing it in Ziplocs - we have a gallon and a half of frozen corn in the freezer. Who knows what I'm going to do with that stuff. I don't really want to eat it. I found a fun post on Mark's Daily Apple that might have some ideas, though.
So yeah. Any squash or cucumber ideas, please please please let me know. Oh! We did make pickles! We have a big jar of cucumber spears slowly pickling away in a nice dill brine; I really hope they come out well. We'll probably do a lot more of that, cuz I like pickles, and they keep well. I think we'll need more jars. We made more pickled eggs, too. I love those. And now made with farm-fresh eggs from the farm's "all-natural bug control!" But even with the pickles, right now we have 5 very large cucumbers in the fridge, along with a big summer squash, a bigger zucchini, and the ufo-shaped pattypan. I really didn't expect to be drowning in veggies, but it seems we are... can you pickle corn?
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Mt. Washington
This past weekend was our camping trip. We got to the campsite around 2:30 Friday, after a leisurely morning (having packed frantically Thursday night), got our little tent set up, unpacked our stuff and hung out for a while. I don't think I slept at all Friday night, unfortunately. The camping mats were great as far as mats go, but they're hard compared to our mattress, and then my sister borrowed an air mattress from someone for their tent and you know how loud those things can be when someone fidgets, and you can clearly hear it in the next tent, and then of course her boyfriend KICKED THE ON SWITCH on the silly thing at four in the morning, and shortly after that it was the birds, and then we all had to get up at 5 anyway to get to the mountain early enough to beat the storms predicted for the afternoon. (Love you sis! It really wasn't that bad. You're forgiven. :P)
Breakfast time consisted of a hard boiled (farm-fresh) egg and slices of salami. Why salami? It didn't get pulled out in time for me to add it to my lunch wraps, that's why, and I like salami and had no intentions of missing out. (Lunch wraps: two slices of either turkey or roast beef, spread with dijon mustard and rolled up with a slice of cheese. Make 4, put in ziploc, put in camelback pack.) There should have been lettuce to substitute for the tortillas others used, but we forgot to put those in the cooler... but that's ok, they weren't at all necessary.
So our bags are packed and we're ready to go... and it starts raining. Isn't it ironic? (OK, all lyrics aside, it really was ironic because we got up ridiculously early to avoid the rain.) We go anyway. Get to the mountain, still raining, start hiking anyway at 6:50 am. Vibrams are great, my feet are soaked but it's clear that the boots everyone else has aren't exactly dry, we're ahead of everyone except my cousin who's sticking with us, playing with our camera between squalls, we get to the caretaker's hut halfway up, check the midstation weather report and, half an hour later when everyone catches up, we all hike on, for maybe half a mile.
At this point we're well above the treeline, in Tuckerman's Ravine where the snowpack stays put until well into the summer. There's quite a bit still there, although no longer enough to ski on and quite dangerous at the moment due to the heavy rain that's been going on all morning.
Now, for those of you who have never been on the Tuckerman's Ravine trail, let me explain something. I've said the caretaker's hut was halfway. And so it is; the whole trail is about 4 miles, and the hut is a little more than 2 miles up. What that doesn't explain is the elevation. At the point we were in Tuckerman's Ravine, we had almost 2,000 feet left to climb - upwards. The hardest part, the steepest part, of that trail is entirely rock. Lichen-covered, and at that point very wet, rock.
With the fog, the thunderstorm warnings, and the hail warnings posted at the caretaker's hut we decided that it just wasn't worth the risk for us, and we all turned around. One of my more disappointing Mt. Washington hikes, to be sure, but at least that meant I was able to wear my Vibrams the whole way. We were back down at Pinkham Notch at 11:30. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt; at least my bunions didn't, although I did get a small blister. I didn't feel like I would ever be dry again.
I'm not certain I would have made it down in my Vibrams if we had gone all the way up. Now, though, I have a pair of KSO Treks to try out, and with the thicker soles and better grip I think they'll be much better for those long hiking trips.
Of course, at that point, we go back to the campsite, where it is still raining. We all change in an attempt to dry off, and my mom, my sister, and I go out shopping for a canopy to put up. Of course when we get back with our little 9x9 canopy tent (after stopping for Irish Coffees, of course), it's stopped raining. But that was ok. We set it up with our three tents around it so that if it rained during the night we could get in and out of our tents easily, without getting water inside. It looked like a cute little tent séance.
Then, of course, it's appetizers and drinks and dinner time. As is usual with my mom's family, there is an overabundance of food: many chickens, lots of ribs, shrimp cocktails, the pasta salad I was asked to bring, the cole slaw my parents brought, veggie platters, cheese platters, and sweet potato chips. And of course cake and cookies for dessert. I was pretty good, paleo-wise: I ate a few bites of the pasta salad, since I'd spent so much time chopping veggies to make it; I ate far too many sweet potato chips, unfortunately fried in corn oil (my parents brought 20 sweet potatoes with them for this purpose); and a bite of cookie and a few bites of cake. Other than that everything was paleo-friendly, and although probably not paleo-ideal I think I did well. By the way, 20 sweet potatoes take about half an hour to peel and slice, even with a mandolin (thanks, Rich and Dad) and far, far longer to fry up. I think we fried them in about 15 batches, with most batches eaten before the next one was done. At least they were appreciated! BTW, for perfect chips: soak thin, even potato slices in water. Get oil up to 400 degrees. Drop in slices, carefully to avoid too much splatter from the water. Stir occasionally and take out when they start to brown. Salt immediately upon removal, and drain on paper towels.
Then it comes time to split up leftovers, pack it all in various cars, hang out a little longer, and go to bed. I slept really well Saturday night. It's amazing what a long day can do. Breakfast was an egg, a banana, a watermelon slice, and coffee.
Then it was a three hour drive, followed by cooking class. Moist heat methods today:
Osso buco
Pork and butternut squash stew (Rich and I made this one)
Braised rabbit
Braised chicken
Braised fennel with sea bass
Artichoke salad (the artichokes were stewed first, we worked on this one too)
Braised purple cabbage
Braised short ribs
Overall, enough to feed 12 with plenty of leftovers for people to take home, and not more than a cup of flour and a tablespoon of cornstarch in all of it put together. By far the most paleo-friendly cooking class yet, and we've come away with some amazing recipes to use. I liked all of those dishes.
Bonus! The two rabbits used were whole, and came with livers and hearts and things. Apparently nobody else likes liver, so Rich and I got those. I also managed to snag one of the osso buco bones for myself as leftovers, and ate the marrow as part of lunch yesterday. I've heard marrow described as 'buttery', and I really can't think of a better description. I was a little skeptical, never having tried it before, but now I'm hooked. I will find ways to make this. (Dreams of a trip to the butcher...)
So after class, we visited a friend who graciously picked up our CSA veggies for us. As expected, it was more than we could handle, so we insisted he keep quite a bit, as an expression of our gratitude for having picked them up for us. There's more corn, of course, and we haven't even finished the corn we got last week; there are far too many cucumbers, more tomatoes, green beans, zucchini and squash, and a cabbage I hadn't seen before and a squash that I'd only seen once. (Pointed cabbage and pattypan squash, as it turns out.) Last night in an effort to use the rest of last week's tomatoes we made a lovely little salad to go with leftover chicken from camping, and as part of lunch today. We're going to have to freeze the beans, and I think Rich is going to make corn pudding for himself with the four ears we still have.
Well, we had a very busy weekend, and we get to the gym and Smokey Bones tomorrow, the print shop (to look at wedding invitations) on Thursday, out for a friend's birthday Friday, and up to my parent's place Sunday. I'm starting to wonder if things will ever slow down. Anyway, here's the recipe for the salad we made.
4 medium-size cucumbers
3 large tomatoes
Dice and toss with dressing.
To make the dressing, blend together:
1/2 cup Olive oil
1/4 cup Lemon juice
1/8 cup Sherry wine vinegar
A lot of dried mint (maybe 2 tbsp? freshly chopped would be better if you find it)
A dash of dried thyme
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
The longer you let it sit, the more mint flavor you get. It actually smells like watermelon, which is odd, but it's quite tasty, especially with a dollop of Greek yogurt on top.
Breakfast time consisted of a hard boiled (farm-fresh) egg and slices of salami. Why salami? It didn't get pulled out in time for me to add it to my lunch wraps, that's why, and I like salami and had no intentions of missing out. (Lunch wraps: two slices of either turkey or roast beef, spread with dijon mustard and rolled up with a slice of cheese. Make 4, put in ziploc, put in camelback pack.) There should have been lettuce to substitute for the tortillas others used, but we forgot to put those in the cooler... but that's ok, they weren't at all necessary.
So our bags are packed and we're ready to go... and it starts raining. Isn't it ironic? (OK, all lyrics aside, it really was ironic because we got up ridiculously early to avoid the rain.) We go anyway. Get to the mountain, still raining, start hiking anyway at 6:50 am. Vibrams are great, my feet are soaked but it's clear that the boots everyone else has aren't exactly dry, we're ahead of everyone except my cousin who's sticking with us, playing with our camera between squalls, we get to the caretaker's hut halfway up, check the midstation weather report and, half an hour later when everyone catches up, we all hike on, for maybe half a mile.
At this point we're well above the treeline, in Tuckerman's Ravine where the snowpack stays put until well into the summer. There's quite a bit still there, although no longer enough to ski on and quite dangerous at the moment due to the heavy rain that's been going on all morning.
Now, for those of you who have never been on the Tuckerman's Ravine trail, let me explain something. I've said the caretaker's hut was halfway. And so it is; the whole trail is about 4 miles, and the hut is a little more than 2 miles up. What that doesn't explain is the elevation. At the point we were in Tuckerman's Ravine, we had almost 2,000 feet left to climb - upwards. The hardest part, the steepest part, of that trail is entirely rock. Lichen-covered, and at that point very wet, rock.
With the fog, the thunderstorm warnings, and the hail warnings posted at the caretaker's hut we decided that it just wasn't worth the risk for us, and we all turned around. One of my more disappointing Mt. Washington hikes, to be sure, but at least that meant I was able to wear my Vibrams the whole way. We were back down at Pinkham Notch at 11:30. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt; at least my bunions didn't, although I did get a small blister. I didn't feel like I would ever be dry again.
I'm not certain I would have made it down in my Vibrams if we had gone all the way up. Now, though, I have a pair of KSO Treks to try out, and with the thicker soles and better grip I think they'll be much better for those long hiking trips.
Of course, at that point, we go back to the campsite, where it is still raining. We all change in an attempt to dry off, and my mom, my sister, and I go out shopping for a canopy to put up. Of course when we get back with our little 9x9 canopy tent (after stopping for Irish Coffees, of course), it's stopped raining. But that was ok. We set it up with our three tents around it so that if it rained during the night we could get in and out of our tents easily, without getting water inside. It looked like a cute little tent séance.
Then, of course, it's appetizers and drinks and dinner time. As is usual with my mom's family, there is an overabundance of food: many chickens, lots of ribs, shrimp cocktails, the pasta salad I was asked to bring, the cole slaw my parents brought, veggie platters, cheese platters, and sweet potato chips. And of course cake and cookies for dessert. I was pretty good, paleo-wise: I ate a few bites of the pasta salad, since I'd spent so much time chopping veggies to make it; I ate far too many sweet potato chips, unfortunately fried in corn oil (my parents brought 20 sweet potatoes with them for this purpose); and a bite of cookie and a few bites of cake. Other than that everything was paleo-friendly, and although probably not paleo-ideal I think I did well. By the way, 20 sweet potatoes take about half an hour to peel and slice, even with a mandolin (thanks, Rich and Dad) and far, far longer to fry up. I think we fried them in about 15 batches, with most batches eaten before the next one was done. At least they were appreciated! BTW, for perfect chips: soak thin, even potato slices in water. Get oil up to 400 degrees. Drop in slices, carefully to avoid too much splatter from the water. Stir occasionally and take out when they start to brown. Salt immediately upon removal, and drain on paper towels.
Then it comes time to split up leftovers, pack it all in various cars, hang out a little longer, and go to bed. I slept really well Saturday night. It's amazing what a long day can do. Breakfast was an egg, a banana, a watermelon slice, and coffee.
Then it was a three hour drive, followed by cooking class. Moist heat methods today:
Osso buco
Pork and butternut squash stew (Rich and I made this one)
Braised rabbit
Braised chicken
Braised fennel with sea bass
Artichoke salad (the artichokes were stewed first, we worked on this one too)
Braised purple cabbage
Braised short ribs
Overall, enough to feed 12 with plenty of leftovers for people to take home, and not more than a cup of flour and a tablespoon of cornstarch in all of it put together. By far the most paleo-friendly cooking class yet, and we've come away with some amazing recipes to use. I liked all of those dishes.
Bonus! The two rabbits used were whole, and came with livers and hearts and things. Apparently nobody else likes liver, so Rich and I got those. I also managed to snag one of the osso buco bones for myself as leftovers, and ate the marrow as part of lunch yesterday. I've heard marrow described as 'buttery', and I really can't think of a better description. I was a little skeptical, never having tried it before, but now I'm hooked. I will find ways to make this. (Dreams of a trip to the butcher...)
So after class, we visited a friend who graciously picked up our CSA veggies for us. As expected, it was more than we could handle, so we insisted he keep quite a bit, as an expression of our gratitude for having picked them up for us. There's more corn, of course, and we haven't even finished the corn we got last week; there are far too many cucumbers, more tomatoes, green beans, zucchini and squash, and a cabbage I hadn't seen before and a squash that I'd only seen once. (Pointed cabbage and pattypan squash, as it turns out.) Last night in an effort to use the rest of last week's tomatoes we made a lovely little salad to go with leftover chicken from camping, and as part of lunch today. We're going to have to freeze the beans, and I think Rich is going to make corn pudding for himself with the four ears we still have.
Well, we had a very busy weekend, and we get to the gym and Smokey Bones tomorrow, the print shop (to look at wedding invitations) on Thursday, out for a friend's birthday Friday, and up to my parent's place Sunday. I'm starting to wonder if things will ever slow down. Anyway, here's the recipe for the salad we made.
4 medium-size cucumbers
3 large tomatoes
Dice and toss with dressing.
To make the dressing, blend together:
1/2 cup Olive oil
1/4 cup Lemon juice
1/8 cup Sherry wine vinegar
A lot of dried mint (maybe 2 tbsp? freshly chopped would be better if you find it)
A dash of dried thyme
Sea salt and black pepper to taste
The longer you let it sit, the more mint flavor you get. It actually smells like watermelon, which is odd, but it's quite tasty, especially with a dollop of Greek yogurt on top.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Vibrams at the theme park
We went to Six Flags today with a couple friends. Following a suggestion from one of them, we wore our VFFs to the park. All day. Including the water park.
My feet are tired.
But other than that, they're happy. No pain from my bunions. One small blister, but it's not a painful one. The cobblestones were fun to walk on. And we had four different people ask us about our shoes. Would I wear them to the park again? Definitely. However, they didn't dry as quickly as I would have liked, and I would not want to wear them for very long when wet. My toes turned into raisins. Still, it was better than no shoes, in that kind of place... And they don't let you wear sneakers on the water park rides.
We packed lunch and ate on the grass next to the car rather than eat the overpriced, overgreased park food. Chicken salad and tuna salad, with various mustards and spices and bbq sauces and such, on bok choy leaf wraps. Recipe!
First, mayo.
Beat two egg yolks with 1 tsp lemon juice and 1 tsp prepared mustard. (Or 2 tsp lemon and 1/2 tsp. dry mustard.) Beat until the mixture forms a ribbon when you pull out your whisk, rather than droplets. (You can freeze the leftover whites to use in a soufflé.)
Get a cup of olive oil (or other oil. I happen to like the flavor from olive oil; many people like to use high-oleic sunflower oil for half of it to soften the flavor.) One drop at a time, beat oil into egg yolks. Once you've added a third of the oil you can add it faster - a tablespoon at time - until it's all beaten in. If it's not thickening while you add it, you've broken your mayo, and you'll need to start over with a clean bowl, with a new egg yolk and some lemon juice beaten to ribbon-texture, and slowly beat in your broken mayo. But do it slower this time. Once all your oil is in, taste, and add more lemon juice if wanted. Add water to thin it until you like the texture.
Now that you have your mayo, either grill a few chicken breasts or drain a few cans of tuna. If chicken, shred with forks. Mix protein with mayo. Dice and mix in a tomato and half an onion. Dice the stems of your bok choy and add that in too (or celery, if you're not using bok choy.)
Place spoonfuls into bok choy leaves (or other cabbage or lettuce leaf.) Add any mustards or spices you like. Add-in suggestions: lemon pepper, cumin, cayenne, Italian spice blend, Dijon mustard, wasabi. Sunflower seeds are a nice addition too. Wrap and eat!
All of the above fits into a cooler really well, and thus makes an awesome theme-park paleo picnic lunch.
My feet are tired.
But other than that, they're happy. No pain from my bunions. One small blister, but it's not a painful one. The cobblestones were fun to walk on. And we had four different people ask us about our shoes. Would I wear them to the park again? Definitely. However, they didn't dry as quickly as I would have liked, and I would not want to wear them for very long when wet. My toes turned into raisins. Still, it was better than no shoes, in that kind of place... And they don't let you wear sneakers on the water park rides.
We packed lunch and ate on the grass next to the car rather than eat the overpriced, overgreased park food. Chicken salad and tuna salad, with various mustards and spices and bbq sauces and such, on bok choy leaf wraps. Recipe!
First, mayo.
Beat two egg yolks with 1 tsp lemon juice and 1 tsp prepared mustard. (Or 2 tsp lemon and 1/2 tsp. dry mustard.) Beat until the mixture forms a ribbon when you pull out your whisk, rather than droplets. (You can freeze the leftover whites to use in a soufflé.)
Get a cup of olive oil (or other oil. I happen to like the flavor from olive oil; many people like to use high-oleic sunflower oil for half of it to soften the flavor.) One drop at a time, beat oil into egg yolks. Once you've added a third of the oil you can add it faster - a tablespoon at time - until it's all beaten in. If it's not thickening while you add it, you've broken your mayo, and you'll need to start over with a clean bowl, with a new egg yolk and some lemon juice beaten to ribbon-texture, and slowly beat in your broken mayo. But do it slower this time. Once all your oil is in, taste, and add more lemon juice if wanted. Add water to thin it until you like the texture.
Now that you have your mayo, either grill a few chicken breasts or drain a few cans of tuna. If chicken, shred with forks. Mix protein with mayo. Dice and mix in a tomato and half an onion. Dice the stems of your bok choy and add that in too (or celery, if you're not using bok choy.)
Place spoonfuls into bok choy leaves (or other cabbage or lettuce leaf.) Add any mustards or spices you like. Add-in suggestions: lemon pepper, cumin, cayenne, Italian spice blend, Dijon mustard, wasabi. Sunflower seeds are a nice addition too. Wrap and eat!
All of the above fits into a cooler really well, and thus makes an awesome theme-park paleo picnic lunch.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Some recipes and things
A friend of mine asked my about the french fries we made in our cooking class last week. They were super-tasty, and I'll probably make them again anyway, so here it is:
Batonnet your potatoes. (French-fry size cut: ½ inch × ½ inch × 2½-3 inches.) I believe we used long white potatoes, but any white potato should do.
Put them in water in the fridge or freezer for a while. (Don't let them freeze, though.) This way, the potatoes will absorb water instead of lots of oil.
Start heating your oil to 375 degrees or so. I like olive oil, personally. If you're using a pot, fill it less than halfway.
Drain the potatoes well. The drier they are, the less sputtering you'll get.
Put the fries in the oil. If possible, use a metal basket so you'll be able to take them out easily. Stand back. You may need to do several batches, depending on how many potatoes you got and how big your pot is.
After 5-6 minutes, take them out of the oil and let them drain. Watch them; I'm not certain I have that timing correct. And it'll depend on how hot your oil really is, and how many fries you added to it.
Put lots of fresh, grated Parmesan in a bowl, with a few sprigs of minced fresh rosemary and red pepper to taste. Add the fries and toss until evenly coated.
Add salt. There! Awesome-fries!
We've also been having fun cooking up our veggies from the CSA. Monday night we made a spinach and strawberry salad, topped with lightly toasted chopped walnuts, to go with pan-fried buffalo liver and caramelized onion. I have a picture somewhere of Rich's plate, I'll have to see if I can find it later. (My parents had gotten us the buffalo liver to try - thanks!) It was delicious, and we had plenty for Tuesday night, too. Last night was karaoke night, so we were out with friends; I got a bun-less burger with peppered bacon, bleu cheese crumbles, diced jalapeno, and of course pickles, onion, lettuce, and tomato. And steamed broccoli on the side. It was a lot of food, and so yummy. Of course then we ordered dessert and I had to count it as one of my special occasion meals... I've used 4 out of twenty of those, and I'm 17 days into my 100-day challenge, so I'm mostly on-track there.
Then this morning, after our gym workout, we made a quick salad for lunch today. Grilled chicken, field lettuce, two big tomatoes, and a few scallions, and it'll probably last us for lunch tomorrow too. Yay CSA! It's making our meals so much more fun, both to cook and to eat. We still have another bag of spinach and a bunch of bok choy to cook up and eat before we get more stuff on Saturday. We're doing a stir-fry tonight with the bok choy as our base. I wonder if we have any ginger to use, too. I'm getting hungry for that salad now. Let's see, that's a 14 hour fast. Hmm. Maybe I can go longer tomorrow.
Batonnet your potatoes. (French-fry size cut: ½ inch × ½ inch × 2½-3 inches.) I believe we used long white potatoes, but any white potato should do.
Put them in water in the fridge or freezer for a while. (Don't let them freeze, though.) This way, the potatoes will absorb water instead of lots of oil.
Start heating your oil to 375 degrees or so. I like olive oil, personally. If you're using a pot, fill it less than halfway.
Drain the potatoes well. The drier they are, the less sputtering you'll get.
Put the fries in the oil. If possible, use a metal basket so you'll be able to take them out easily. Stand back. You may need to do several batches, depending on how many potatoes you got and how big your pot is.
After 5-6 minutes, take them out of the oil and let them drain. Watch them; I'm not certain I have that timing correct. And it'll depend on how hot your oil really is, and how many fries you added to it.
Put lots of fresh, grated Parmesan in a bowl, with a few sprigs of minced fresh rosemary and red pepper to taste. Add the fries and toss until evenly coated.
Add salt. There! Awesome-fries!
We've also been having fun cooking up our veggies from the CSA. Monday night we made a spinach and strawberry salad, topped with lightly toasted chopped walnuts, to go with pan-fried buffalo liver and caramelized onion. I have a picture somewhere of Rich's plate, I'll have to see if I can find it later. (My parents had gotten us the buffalo liver to try - thanks!) It was delicious, and we had plenty for Tuesday night, too. Last night was karaoke night, so we were out with friends; I got a bun-less burger with peppered bacon, bleu cheese crumbles, diced jalapeno, and of course pickles, onion, lettuce, and tomato. And steamed broccoli on the side. It was a lot of food, and so yummy. Of course then we ordered dessert and I had to count it as one of my special occasion meals... I've used 4 out of twenty of those, and I'm 17 days into my 100-day challenge, so I'm mostly on-track there.
Then this morning, after our gym workout, we made a quick salad for lunch today. Grilled chicken, field lettuce, two big tomatoes, and a few scallions, and it'll probably last us for lunch tomorrow too. Yay CSA! It's making our meals so much more fun, both to cook and to eat. We still have another bag of spinach and a bunch of bok choy to cook up and eat before we get more stuff on Saturday. We're doing a stir-fry tonight with the bok choy as our base. I wonder if we have any ginger to use, too. I'm getting hungry for that salad now. Let's see, that's a 14 hour fast. Hmm. Maybe I can go longer tomorrow.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Dinner last night and lunch today
Salad!
Ingredients:
1 lb crispy, yummy bacon (unfortunately, not grass-fed.)
2 grilled chicken breasts (also not pastured :( We'll get there.)
2.5 tomatoes, left over from a previous salad
Half a head of iceberg lettuce, also left over
4 hard-boiled eggs (yay! the last of the store-bought! Farm-raised coming tomorrow.)
Dressing:
Unknown amount of cider vinegar (Too much, will have to reduce this next time)
About the same amount of extra-virgin olive oil
Some of the bacon grease
Some crushed garlic from a jar
Some diced red jalapenos, also from a jar
Dried basil, thyme, oregano, lots of these because I like my spices
Dash ground sea salt, black pepper
Progress! For once I didn't burn the bacon while dicing the veggies. Got everything timed well. Eggs finished boiling first, started them cooling; finished dicing tomatoes and slicing lettuce in between flipping over bacon; bacon and chicken started cooling down while I diced the eggs; cut up the chicken and then crumbled the bacon. Threw together a quick dressing in less than two minutes; never buying Italian salad dressing again.
Also I managed to not eat anything until 4, giving me an 18 hour fast (except for the cream in my coffee. Really close though!) The 12-8pm work shift does strange things to one's eating habits: wake up at 11 to go to work, eat lunch somewhere between 3 and 6, get home at 8:30 and start cooking dinner if hungry, eat at 9 or 10, go to bed at 3am. Good thing I'm a night person. Good thing Rich and I share this madness! We'll probably want more normal schedules at some point, but I really don't know when.
Bought some lavender essential oil today. Tonight's experiment will be making my own deodorant. I threw out the remainder of my old travel-size Lady Speed Stick this morning, so I have an empty container to fill, and all the ingredients needed to fill it: 2 tbsp coconut oil, 1/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup cornstarch, and as of today, two or three drops lavender oil. Whoohoo! No more aluminum! No more parabens! (Assuming it works, of course.)
I did, however, have a moment of weakness. My loving fiance received a cannoli as a thank-you, and of course only ate half of it due to his silly two-donut binge this morning (Dunkin's was giving a free donut per drink.) I like cannoli, so I kindly finished it for him. At some point I think I'll have to try making a cannoli shell with coconut and almond flour, with a nice whipped cream cheese filling, so I won't fall to that particular temptation again. Oh! with chocolate bits! As Hanners says, "baking is science for hungry people", and I've been having fun finding recipes to bake treats using paleo ingredients. Besides, if I can find a good bread recipe, maybe Rich can stop buying loaves of potato bread.
100-day challenge progress: 4 days down. 1 special occasion meal (overly sweetened butternut squash, a beer, and mashed potato. Restaurant stuff.) Half a cannoli today, so that's a second 'special occasion' I guess. 1 hour at the gym Wednesday. On track!
Ingredients:
1 lb crispy, yummy bacon (unfortunately, not grass-fed.)
2 grilled chicken breasts (also not pastured :( We'll get there.)
2.5 tomatoes, left over from a previous salad
Half a head of iceberg lettuce, also left over
4 hard-boiled eggs (yay! the last of the store-bought! Farm-raised coming tomorrow.)
Dressing:
Unknown amount of cider vinegar (Too much, will have to reduce this next time)
About the same amount of extra-virgin olive oil
Some of the bacon grease
Some crushed garlic from a jar
Some diced red jalapenos, also from a jar
Dried basil, thyme, oregano, lots of these because I like my spices
Dash ground sea salt, black pepper
Progress! For once I didn't burn the bacon while dicing the veggies. Got everything timed well. Eggs finished boiling first, started them cooling; finished dicing tomatoes and slicing lettuce in between flipping over bacon; bacon and chicken started cooling down while I diced the eggs; cut up the chicken and then crumbled the bacon. Threw together a quick dressing in less than two minutes; never buying Italian salad dressing again.
Also I managed to not eat anything until 4, giving me an 18 hour fast (except for the cream in my coffee. Really close though!) The 12-8pm work shift does strange things to one's eating habits: wake up at 11 to go to work, eat lunch somewhere between 3 and 6, get home at 8:30 and start cooking dinner if hungry, eat at 9 or 10, go to bed at 3am. Good thing I'm a night person. Good thing Rich and I share this madness! We'll probably want more normal schedules at some point, but I really don't know when.
Bought some lavender essential oil today. Tonight's experiment will be making my own deodorant. I threw out the remainder of my old travel-size Lady Speed Stick this morning, so I have an empty container to fill, and all the ingredients needed to fill it: 2 tbsp coconut oil, 1/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup cornstarch, and as of today, two or three drops lavender oil. Whoohoo! No more aluminum! No more parabens! (Assuming it works, of course.)
I did, however, have a moment of weakness. My loving fiance received a cannoli as a thank-you, and of course only ate half of it due to his silly two-donut binge this morning (Dunkin's was giving a free donut per drink.) I like cannoli, so I kindly finished it for him. At some point I think I'll have to try making a cannoli shell with coconut and almond flour, with a nice whipped cream cheese filling, so I won't fall to that particular temptation again. Oh! with chocolate bits! As Hanners says, "baking is science for hungry people", and I've been having fun finding recipes to bake treats using paleo ingredients. Besides, if I can find a good bread recipe, maybe Rich can stop buying loaves of potato bread.
100-day challenge progress: 4 days down. 1 special occasion meal (overly sweetened butternut squash, a beer, and mashed potato. Restaurant stuff.) Half a cannoli today, so that's a second 'special occasion' I guess. 1 hour at the gym Wednesday. On track!
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