Author: heather

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Good recipes from the past couple of weeks

heather

I forgot/ran out of time to post the recipes I made last week, and this week was kind of a bust as far as cooking at home goes (massive case of the lazies), so I’m combining two weeks into one post.  Woo!  Look at me!  I crazy!!

Summer Squash Breakfast Bowl – This recipe was suuuuuuuper tasty.  The cauliflower rice actually turned out – for the first time EVER!!  The title is a  little misleading – it’s not necessarily a breakfast meal.  I made it for supper and then ate it for lunch for two more days.  I also didn’t add the eggs because the dish had enough junk in it already.  It was a little spicy, so I think knext time I would cut down on the 3 T of hot sauce (Julie likes spicy food!!).    I also am not a fan of garlic powder; I prefer fresh garlic, so next time I would sub that out too.  I had no bacon fat, so I used coconut oil.  It turned out fantastic.

Heavenly Paleo Meatloaf – This is the second time I’ve made this recipe, and it turned out very tasty both times.  This recipe makes 2 loaves of meatloaf, so I freeze one, and we eat one.  It’s very easy to make, and it’s delicious with baked sweet potatoes.  I like to eat the leftovers sauteed with eggs and veggies.

Honey BBQ Marinade – I had one of my master of conservation classes yesterday, and we had the pleasure of listening to Bill Crandall from Crandall Farms.  He gave a very interesting talk about bees (more on that in a separate post), and he also donated a couple of boxes of honey (and gave us the cutest tiny bottle of honey – check out the pic in my Instagram feed link on the right); the proceeds of which go to Nahant Marsh.  So I bought a pint, of course.  It had a recipe tied to it for Honey BBQ Marinade.  You can find it on page 2 of this pdf.  I had a package of drumsticks defrosted in the fridge, so I gave the recipe the old college try tonight.  I had to cook the chicken for about 15 minutes longer than the recipe said, but I did have 3 lbs of chicken instead of 2.  I was confused that the recipe calls for a “pinch salt/pepper” but also 1/4 tbsp black pepper.  Why a pinch + 1/4 tablespoon?  And that’s a lot of pepper!!  Anyway, the chicken turned out good, but with 1/2 a cup of honey, it’s pretty sweet for my palate.  I’m starting the 21 Day Sugar Detox in a few weeks; however, so I’m front loading a bunch of sugar consumption.  I’m trying to make my first few days of the detox as miserable as possible.

And that’s about it for planned meals.  Outside of that, it’s been Habaneros, Chipotle, HyVee Chinese, Front Street, and random scramblings of eggs, hamburger and veggies.  This week is not boding well either, as it’s 7:52PM, and I have yet to do any meal planning.  I do have pork chops and ground buffalo defrosting in the fridge, so as long as we have some veggies to sautee, we’ll have some fairly balanced and delicious meals this week.

Take care y’all, and I’ll catch you on the flip side.  Whatever the hell that means.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

The Week in Recipes

heather

We had some more great meals this week.    I rehashed some old favorites – Asian Pork Meatballs with Dipping Sauce, Sweet Potato Salad, Grilled Eggs with Mexican Chorizo.  They were all absolutely delicious.  I also tried two new recipes:

Moist Chocolate Zucchini Bread – This bread was super tasty.  I used 3/4 cup of almond butter, with a little smidge of macademia nut butter, since I didn’t have any sunbutter.  The title says it all – it was super moist and nice and chocolately.  I think you could even use less honey, and it would still taste great.

Cowboy Steak with Chimichurri Sauce – I used New York Strip steaks for this recipe (the recipe calls for “cowboy steaks.”  I have no idea what that is!!).  I used a fresh parsley and oregano from my garden, and the chimichurri sauce turned out delicious.  We don’t have high -quality olive oil in the house right now (just using the HyVee brand), but the sauce still turned out great.  Make this recipe!  You won’t be sorry!

And that was our week in food.  Now I need to jet to go by groceries for this week.  I think I’m going to try my hand at beet chips.  Wish me luck!

Health & Fitness

Cleaning the Closet

heather

If you are one of the about 5 people who actually read my blog, you will know that I’ve been following the primal/paleo diet/lifestyle since January of this year.  As a result, I’ve lost about 20 pounds and a few dress sizes.  I finally had time to clean out my closet today and found that I have about 30 pieces of clothing I need to get rid of.  I’m ready to commit to being my current size for the foreseeable future.  If I get rid of this stuff, I’ll have to!  I can’t afford to buy another whole new wardrobe!!

Here is a link to the list of clothes I’m getting rid of.  If you are interested in anything or everything, let me know.  I can send pics if needed.  If you want to buy the whole kit and caboodle, I’ll sell it to you for $75.  I think you’ll get a good deal, and I won’t have to deal with the people at the consignment store.

If you or anyone you know is interested, feel free to forward them the link.

Cooking/Recipes, Uncategorized

Week 4 of Meal Planning

heather

So….here is another week of meals!

Leftover Sweet Potato Fries – As I mentioned in my last post, Tim added some tomatoes to the leftover chili, to help cut the spices.  While the chili tasted super good, it did NOT agree with the hlo belly!  My digestion was a little effed for like 3 days.  Evidently I cannot handle multiple tablespoons of hot spices in my food.  Lesson learned.

Balsamic Glazed Drumsticks with Turnip and Rutabega Fries (pg 159 of Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals) – These drumsticks were AWESOME!!  They were super easy, and they tasted like teriyaki chicken.  My only regret is that I bought a package of 5 drumsticks.  Next time I will buy a pack of 8 at least, so we’ll have some of these for leftovers.  Mark Sisson has the BEST recipes.  He puts a lot of pictures in his recipes, which is great for showing you how the food should look, but not so great for printing out a nice, concise recipe.  But I’ll take them however he wants to present them.  The fries were good too, I thought.  You basically cut the turnips and rutabegas into fry shape, microwave them for 8 minutes, and then bake them until they get crispy.  I chopped them up and sauteed them with other veggies for breakfast the next morning.  Super tasty.

Best Ever Chicken Wings -I’m not sure if I can agree with the name.  I mean, these were good, but they are not the “best ever.”  I think it boils down to, I just don’t really like sesame oil.  These were good, and we ate them all, but next time I might try to use a different oil.

Beef Brats – I picked up beef brats from Geest Farms at the Farmers Market weekend before last.  These were SUPER TASTY.  Would definitely buy, cook, and eat them again.

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Another week of Paleo meals

heather

We didn’t do quite as well on our week of meal planning this week.  On Sunday we neglected to go to the store, which got us off kilter for the whole week.  We learned our lesson this week, however, and went to both HyVee AND Target on Sunday, despite shopping the whole day in Iowa City and Tanger.  We really didn’t feel like going out again once we got home, but I knew if we didn’t we would regret it!

I also hit the Farmer’s Market on Saturday and got lots of tasty stuff – chicken wings and thighs, ground pork, beef brats, a big, fat watermelon, peppers, and zucchini.  All of it is or will be delicious.

Despite our poor planning, we did make a few good meals this week.

Sweet Potato Chili Fries – I tweaked this recipe a little because the amount of spicy seasonings for the amount of meat seemed a little crazy to me.  I used a full pound of meat, and the chili was still as spicy as hell!  It still tasted good over the sweet potato fries, but it was intense.  We had the leftovers tonight.  Tim added a 28 ounce can of tomatoes to thin it out, and it was still spicy!  I didn’t feel like going to the work of making fries, so we just baked the sweet potatoes in the roaster oven, mashed them, poured the chili over them, and then garnished it with avocado.  I ate a HUGE bowl – my excuse being all I had for lunch was a wimpy lettuce wrap from Jimmy Johns.  Plus I’m in training for this week’s 5K!  Oh, by the way, I got a PR in the mile on Sunday – 8 minutes, 29 seconds!  My legs hurt like a mother today, but it was totally worth it.

Spicy Bison and Sausage Meat Muffins – This recipe made little, tiny meat loaves in the shape of muffins.  Tim really liked them.  I thought they tasted good, but they hurt my stomach for some reason.  I’m not a fan of garlic powder; I prefer to use fresh garlic.  Also, a meal that makes 2.5 pounds of meat for us is a little much.  If I were to make this recipe again, I think I would cut it in half and use fresh garlic.

And….that’s pretty much it for the week!  I told you – we slacked off this week.  BUT!  BUT!  We have tons of tasty recipes on tap for this week – lots of chicken, actually.  I’ll circle back with you all next week and let you know how they turned out.  I bought a new mandoline from Amazon, and I’m going to make beet chips.  I can’t wait!!!!!!!!!

Cooking/Recipes

The Week in Review

heather

We had our second week of trying to eat breakfast and dinner at home each night.  We did pretty well with a few exceptions.  Friday night we had some friends over for Bags and drinks, and we ended up ordering pizza.  It was delicious and immediately made my stomach hurt.  I ate the leftovers on Saturday, and they again made my stomach hurt.  Sometimes I am not so smart.  Today we were out running errands at lunchtime, so we ended up getting tasty Chipotle.

I tried a few new recipes this week that turned out pretty good.  They are as follows.

We got some delicious pork chops from Geest Farms, a local pork producer.  Tim grilled them up, and I made Mexllali Sweet Potatoes to accompany them.  The mixture of the salty pancetta, spicy adobo sauce, and sweet potatoes was super delicious.  I’ll definitely make this recipe again.

We also made Overstuffed Burgers. We didn’t have any duck fat (still haven’t tackled making duck), so we just used olive oil.  These burgers turned out quite tasty.  They almost tasted like meatloaf.

Tonight I baked a chicken from Behnke Poultry.  I cut up 2 lemons and 1/2 a head of garlic, stuffed it in the bird, rubbed the outside down with olive oil and then sprinked it with copious amounts of fresh ground pepper and kosher salt.  It turned out fantastic.  The skin was super crispy and delicious, and the meat was juicy and tender.  For a side I made Roasted and Marinated Mushrooms.   I have previously never cooked with shallots, and now I’ve used them twice in a week!  The mushrooms were easy and delicious.  Definitely will make them again.

Hopefully this week we can do a little better with eating at home.  No more pizza for me this week!  However, we are planning on hitting up River Roots Live, so I’m going to have to steel myself to resist the fair food!

Outside of eating well, exercising, and playing Bags, we also did the Xstream Cleanup on Saturday morning.  Here is a pic of Teem and me pulling a log out of the creek.  Here is a group pic.  It was a really dirty job, and I got copious amount of gross creek water (steeped in a dead possum) down my left boot.  But it was a pretty quick 3 hours, and the group we were with was full of hard workers with positive attitudes.  We cleaned a ton of junk out of  the creek.  It really made me think about my plastic usage too.  We found so many straws, plastic bags, and paper cup lids.  I’m really glad we did it.

That was our week in a nutshell.  Hope you had a great week too!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Four Days In

heather

The “no eating out” thing is going well so far, no thanks to me.  I tried to convince the Timsy Tee to go out for supper on Friday night.  It just seemed wrong to stay at home on a Friday night!  He held firm, however, good man that he is, and we had a great supper at home.

I tried a few new recipes this week.  Here is a rundown:

Roasted Eggplant Stacks – This recipe actually turned out pretty tasty!  It was the first time I have cooked with eggplant.  Next time I think I will remove the skin before cooking the slices, as they were really tough.  I ended up cutting the skins off after the slices were cooked, and that was a hot, messy job.  I also found that fresh eggplant is very spongelike.  I poured olive oil (Tim is not a big fan of coconut oil, so I used olive oil instead) over all the slices and went back to rub it in, but it was all soaked in already!  You have to pour and spread each one individually.   I also put a fried egg (fried in copious amounts of ghee) on top instead of a poached egg, and that was delicious.  I did have a lot of eggplant leftover, however.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  It did not look very appetizing the next day.  I’m not sure I would make this recipe again, for that reason.

Too Easy Chicken Adobo – This recipe turned out OK.  I think I overcooked the chicken a bit.  It seemed dry.  I also used chicken breasts instead of chicken thighs (because that’s what I had in stock), so I’m sure that contributed to the dryness.  At $7/lb for chicken breasts, I was a little disappointed.  That’s crazy expensive for chicken.  I went to the Farmers Market yesterday and got a whole chicken instead of the breast, and that was only $2.50/lb!  Another thing – you cook this recipe with onions, and for some reason I do not like the smell of onions cooking in a sauce.  Overall, the chicken turned out good, and we ate it all, but I don’t think I would make this again.

Sweet Potato Salad – Again, I had to modify this recipe.  I have never seen purple Okinawan potatoes here in Davenport, IA, so I used regular old sweet potatoes.  I added in all the fixings he mentioned (jalapenos, pickles and green onions instead of chives), and it turned out delicious!  I struggled with the homemade mayo though.  I swear I’ve read you can make mayo in the food processor, so I tried it.  I added everything to the processor, less the oil, and then used the oil drizzler topper to pour in the oil.  I didn’t let the egg yolk come completely to room temperature, so that may have affected it too, but the mayo just wouldn’t thicken up!  I poured the whole, ultra-liquidy mess into a container and whisked the heck out of it, but I think it was too late.  It tasted OK, however, so I added it to the potato salad, and once it was in there, you couldn’t tell there was anything wrong with it.  I used 1/2 a cup of olive oil and 1/4 cup of avocado oil.  I didn’t have any dijon mustard, so I used a little Boetjes.  I have a lot of oil left over though, which is the issue with making homemade mayo – it only lasts about 3 days.  Maybe I’ll make egg salad for lunch with it today.  Anyway, this salad was delicious, and I’ll definitely make it again.

Grilled Eggs with Mexican Chorizo – To use an overused meme, NOM NOM!!  I had no idea that it is so easy to make your own chorizo!  This recipe turned out fantastic.  I have a huge bag of ancho chiles from my foray into carnitas territory, so I was all set on that front.  The chorizo turned out super tasty.  We are actually going to have the leftovers with eggs and avocado for breakfast this morning.  It was stormy, so we didn’t want to grill.  Instead, we turned on the Nesco roaster at 400 degrees, let it heat up, and then cooked the peppers/eggs/chorizo for about 13 minutes.  The peppers were perfectly cooked.  I would definitely make this again.  However, I cut the entire stem out of the peppers this time; whereas, next time I will leave it in, just cutting out the white parts of the ribs.  My eggs kept wanting to slide out the ends!

Overall, it was a good week for new recipes.  It am proud that we ate delicious food at home instead of mysterious food out.  This morning I need to make my list for next week, so we can keep up the momentum.  I hit up the Farmers Market yesterday and got a whole chicken, pork chops, 3 dozen eggs, kale, nectarines, and cherries, and we still have ground pork and beef in the freezer, so we are pretty well stocked.

Hope you had a great week too!

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Gluten – You are my enemy, I think

heather

We spent 5 days in NYC, eating and drinking our way through the city.  I did what I knew I shouldn’t do and ate whatever I wanted to – the justification being that “I’m on vacation!!  It’s NYC!  I should take advantage!”

As a result, I went from 128 to 131.6.  I’m ok with being 131.6, but I’m not OK with feeling bad from eating all the not-good-for-me food. So, to get back on the wagon again, in August I have 2 goals:

1.  Eat breakfast and supper at home every day.

2.  Absolutely no gluten.  No beer, no mysterious dressings, no ice cream.  Nothing.  No gluten.  I’m going to try to cut it out completely and see how my allergies are affected.

Wish us luck!

Uncategorized

Lazy Hlo

heather

Holy cow, it’s been an age since I’ve written anything.  Why have I been so remiss in my writing?  Who knows?  Vacation?  Laziness?  Busy-ness?  Lack of anything interesting to say?  Probably mostly the latter to tell you the truth.

Well, I’m writing tonight despite not having anything interesting to say.  It’s time to get back on the wagon and start writing again. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and now it’s time to formulate some of those thoughts into words.  Well, not right now, but over the next couple of weeks.  Right now I’m just saying hi to my blog and then I’m going to go for a walk.

I’ll give a quick update, at least, on life in general.  I’m still doing the primal/paleo thing.  Still seeing great results.  I’m down to a size 4 and weigh 128.1, a weight I’ve not seen since I was perhaps 6?  I feel really good.  I’m struggling with allergies a little still.  I think that’s because I drink alcohol more than I should, and I don’t drink WHAT I should when I DO drink.  If I reigned that in, I’d probably feel better.  But, we’re going on vacation Wednesday, so the dial-in will have to wait until August.  Anyway, I’m feeling good.  I have some abs now and some arm and leg muscles.  I found awesome running shorts I love.  I’ve been running more regularly, probably because I love the shorts so much.  I’ve been getting up at 5AM and running, in point of fact.  It’s too hot to run any other time.  I’ve also finally started doing squats and lunges.  My ass is going to be to die for by the end of the summer, I swears.  What else, what else???  We took a trip to the beach for 4 days.  It was an awesome vacation of biking, jogging, reading, and staring at the beach, wondering how I can change my life so I can stare at the beach more.  We’re offsetting the relaxing vacation with an NYC vacation.  We’re Amtraking it.  Pray for no delays and break downs.

Work is work and is fine.

I haven’t been doing any art outside of a pencil drawing of Tim that looks like my uncle Jerry.

I’ve sold a few coozies on Etsy.  I’ve made like a whopping $40 bucks which has all gone towards rebuilding my wardrobe as most of my clothes aren’t fitting these days.

I did my first Codeacademy lesson in JavaScript tonight.  I’m going to be writing web pages in no time.  Not.  But I do have the itch to learn something new.  Coding?  Maybe?  We’ll see how patient I am and if I can reign in my frenetic mind for a few minutes each day to learn something.

Been reading a good book – Stumbling on Happiness.  It’s all about how we don’t really know what’s going to make us happy in the future because we are currently in the present and see everything through the present filter instead of the non-existent future filter.  God help us all.

Watched a cool Ted talk tonight. Here are the highlights – Level up your life every day.  Live life deliberately.  Collect experiences not stuff.  At least it made me not watch TV at all this evening.

So how’s that for a stream of consciousness post?  The next one will be more coherent, I swear.

Take care and have a pleasant, deliberate evening.

Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Vacation from Paleo

heather

We returned from Ocracoke late last night. The drive home was wrought with annoyances and delays, but it did have two positive results.  1.  I think I might be able to convince Tim to fly next time we want to go someplace 1000+ miles away.  2.  We discovered another vacation destination – the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  Who wants to be our DD??

Since we were on vacation, subject to the whims and offerings of the local restuarants and grocery stores, I decided to relax a bit on my diet while in Ocracoke.  Well, actually, I relaxed it a lot.  As I mentioned in the previous post, whiskey was hard to find on Ocracoke, but you can’t not drink on vacation, so I beered it up.  I also ate hushpuppies, onions rings, chicken strips, clam chowder, fried clams, pizza, amazing tacos, bagel with lox and cream cheese, cream in my coffee, etc. etc. etc.   Keep in mind I ingested all this while wearing a bikini for 6-8 hours a day.  Not a good combo.  I was positive I would weigh 7 lbs more on my return to Iowa.  Maybe it was the steady homeward-bound diet of prunes, apricots, and walnuts, but I actually only gained 3 lbs.  I guess all the biking and swimming and running on the island mitigated some of the effects of the bad diet.

I did notice other ramifications, however.  My general appetite has increased, and my appetite for sweets has skyrocketed.  I want CANDY, and I want it now, and I want A LOT of it!!

Hopefully a week of getting back on track will curb the cravings.  I got off to a good start this morning by making us eggs fried in ghee and sauteed red & green peppers with onions and garlic, garnished with 1/2 an avocado.  After my morning 3 mile walk, I snacked on beef jerky and a date.  I kinda fell off the wagon for lunch though.  Tim’s birthday was yesterday, and since we were on the road for 22 hours, we didn’t have a chance to do much for it.  So today we got a late lunch at Granite City.  You can’t go to GC and NOT get beer, so I got a beer.  A huge beer.  I’m a member of the mug club, so the huge beer was only $3.50.  We’ve been members for a year, so we got a coupon for a free appetizer, so we split the boneless chicken wings (with ranch).  My supper was actually pretty paleo – the Napa Valley Burger with no bun and a side of deeeeelicious steamed broccoli.  I figure we are technically still on vacation since we haven’t gone back to work yet, so I can still cheat.

It’s supposed to be wicked hot this week, so exercising will be a challenge.  Right now, my goal is to wake up at 5AM and jog.  Tim says he’ll do it with me, so we’ll see.  I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, so who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow.

Tim and I are going on another trip in a few weeks – this one to visit my bros in NYC.  I think eating well will be easier there than on the island of Ocracoke.  Plus, I’m sure we’re going to be doing a ton of walking, biking, and hiking, so things shouldn’t get too OOC.

I’m kind of looking forward to August, when our schedule will normalize.

Take care, and have a wonderful evening!