Sunny side up luncheon

First of all, I would like to announce that I am really back.  :-) Having taken a month off paleo and suffered the consequences (mostly, a marked decrease in energy), I've gone back just a few days ago. Not surprisingly, I feel great. No longer exhausted, I am able to accomplish more with my day, often finding myself still full of energy at bed time and choosing to relax or work.

Today I wanted to share my lunch recipe.  Well, it's not really a recipe - it's a "I am hungry, pantry is empty, too broke to go shopping and too busy to cook" lunch approach.

Do you like your eggs sunny side up? That's what I grew up with.  Nothing compares as far as I am concerned. Though if you are of the scrambled persuasion, it works just as well.

To make your mouth water, I have captured a tiny video clip of the eggs sizzling in the pan. A still just doesn't do the same!

Heat up oil in the pan
Throw in fresh salsa (the kind you can buy in a plastic tub in a grocery store)
Cook on high till it sizzles
Break a few eggs
Reduce heat to medium/med-lo and cook till your heart says, it's time.

If you are in the habit of saving some bacon for garnish, throw that on top. DELICIOUS!

Grass fed: beef with taste

I don't know what's wrong with me the last few days - I can't stop blogging...  OK, I have opened a third food package I received from USA Wellness Meat.  I've already expressed my delight with their hot dogs, wrote about the nice eye of round roast the whole family enjoyed and here comes

Forget-the-spices chili

I was so upset, so worked up over personal problems, even the thought of cooking made me cry.  I looked up a recipe for chili.  Broke into tears.  I thought about what Granny does with ground beef.  Considered murder-suicide.  Finally, I figured, I'll just start throwing sh*t at the pan and something will stick.

I placed 1 lb of 75% fat ground beef into the pan and got it browning.  After a few minutes, I tasted the rendered fat.  Hey, it's not so bad!  Didn't have that oily thing going on.  Tasted more like, well, meat broth.  Cool.  Keep going.

Found a can of Italian tomatoes.  Never a bad idea.

Oh, I've got some zucchini squash.  I tasted a slice raw.  Not bad!  I should consider using it in a salad.  Sliced it up and threw it in.

5 minutes later I figured, I should consider spices.  I tasted it.  It was quite good!  I had another spoonful. Couldn't think of anything to add... Habitually, I thew a pinch of salt.

Should I add onions?  Nah, it tastes great.  So I let it reduce for another ten minutes - and there we have it!  Forget-the-spices chili.

Don't try this at home   - unless you have great ground beef.  My conclusion isn't that zucchini makes chili.  It's that this ground beef is amazing!

P.S. I don't get paid by those guys - I just love them.  :-)

[UPDATE: kids loved it.  They cleared pretty substantial portions and asked for more!]

Roast your beef

Are you a big roast beef eater? Is pot roast regularly on your menu?  If you come from an old-fashioned family in the North-East,  the answer is almost certainly yes. For the rest of us, those menu items take some getting used to.

It's been a struggle for me and Granny to find something we could both agree on. After months of experimentation, we still don't agree on anything - but I learned quite a bit about roasting beef in the process.

Lesson 1.  Meat cooked in a covered pot, submerged in fluid will usually come out dry.  Counter-intuitive, right?  So often, I see this yummy-looking dish, all covered in au jus, obviously succulently moist, only to choke on the first piece.  So if you like your meat moist, avoid roasting it in a pot.  Meat exposed to air, such as a proper beef roast, will lock in the moisture.

Lesson 2. You can never put too many spices on the outside of the roast.  By the time it comes out of the of the oven, the spices will have penetrated the meat and there is a lot of meat compared to surface area!  I am yet to decide I have put enough spices on.

Lesson 3. To add the most flavor to the beef, melt some butter and mix the spices with it, rubbing the buttery mixture over your meat.  This will help it penetrate, add the buttery taste and goodness.

Lesson 4. The best gravy is made with real flour: no getting around it.  But there are alternatives.  My favorite idea goes like this:  remove drippings from the pan.  Add some red wine.  Cook it off, scraping the the bits (double points: now you won't have to scrub it in the sink!)  Add to drippings.  To thicken, use some tapioca powder or arrowroot.  Or else, just cook off what you've got. Add fun spices.  (Kitchen bouquet is great for gravy taste and color.)

Lesson 5. There is more than one way to roast your beef!  Here comes a very unusual recipe:

Eye of Round Beef Roast

Eye of Roast is a very lean cut of meat, which makes for excellent smooth roast beef.  (You may need to add some fat to this meal.)

Ingredients
1 Eye of Round Roast (I got mine at US Wellness, but Costco will do in a pinch.)
3 tbs melted butter
2 tsp favorite herbs: herbs de provence is a great mix
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
2 tsp salt (I told you! It has a long way to penetrate!)
2 tsp pepper (or much much more)

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 450F.
Lovingly rub the roast on all sides. (The claims that the roast cares have not been validated, but I do enjoy the connection we make!) Place roast in the oven. Do not line with foil - you will want to make the gravy out of drippings.

Cooking
Place the roast in the oven, set timer to 20 minutes.  Turn off the oven. Do not open as it needs to retain the heat.  Keep it in the oven for 20 minutes per lb of roast.  Thus, the total cooking time for a 3 lb roast is 80 minutes.  (No calculus required.)

The roast is very tender and just a little pink across.  Mine measured a temperature of 140F in the center, which is about perfect.  If you decide, you wish to cook it longer, set the oven to it lowest setting and check again every ten minutes till the right meat temperature is achieved.

I found this recipe on cooks.com. There are some very nice reviews there as well!  My gravy usually contains flour - it's one of the places I simplify paleo as I don't really have any gluten problems. Scroll up to Lesson 4 to make paleo-compliant gravy.  Enjoy!

[Kid Reviews: mixed, but ok.  The little one ate four slices - more than me.  The big one said it wasn't great, but ate the single-slice portion on his plate.]

Excellent lamb

I bought a leg of lamb at Costco for $5/lb.  The price was right, but what do you do with lamb?  While I pondered the question, the lamb sat in the freezer. Months went by. Eventually, I decided I wanted my freezer back. Still, what do you do with lamb?

Growing up in Russia, I knew that lamb could be tasty. However, each time I tried ordering it at an American restaurant, even at nice steakhouses, I was very disappointed. Well, no guts, no glory, right?  I did what anyone in my position would do: type "easy lamb" into google - and wolla - it came back with what turned out to be the best lamb recipe I have ever had! Not to mention the easiest. And if you think, you don't like lamb, do try this approach. I would be very surprised if you liked steak, but walked away unhappy from this slightly Mediterranean and totally excellent lamb.

Ingredients

You need 4-5 lamb chops. I sliced leg of lamb despite Granny's objections that one doesn't make chops out of the leg.  I said, "Well, it's lamb - and I am chopping it!"
3 tbs butter
1 can of pineapple chunks (the big kind - 1 lb 4 oz)
1 bell pepper chopped up
1 tbs of wheat-free tamari (the Paleo-friendly soy sauce)

The equipment
A large frying pan with a lid.

The cooking
Melt the butter in a large pan.
Place the chops on the pan. Brown on one side. Use medium-high heat to get a nice carmelized crust.
Turn over the lamb. Add pineapple with juice, bell pepper, soy sauce. Cover and simmer on low for an hour.

The review.
The lamb is extremely tender, but not watery like meat comes out of a crockpot. Its texture is more like an extremely tender roast.  The sauce does not taste sweet. Somehow, the flavor of the lamb combines with the pineapple and bell pepper to create something new. You do have to like canned pineapple to enjoy it. But this is one of my sweet successes. I tried something new and highly dangerous - and I've got a great meal! Even Granny who got me very grumpy earlier with her comments about lamb, my cooking and all that - had to admit, this was quite eatable.

Please come tell me your impressions if you make it!  I am dying to find out.

Enjoy!

Perfect bacon every time

Surprisingly, I am still doing great with my paleo. I am sick, overworked, overcommitted, don't have time to blog - but eating great and loving it!  Big changes.  I am continuing with the ideas of simplifying paleo diet: finding quick and easy goto recipes, learning the fast way to cook big meals, taking advantage of leftovers.

Today, I want to share the latest discovery, which has taken our breakfast to the next level: perfect bacon! A fellow paleo mommy wrote, "The one downsdie to feeding your baby bacon: Greasy little paws after breakfast!"  I decided, she was right and I needed to find a bacon recipe that does not take so much time and effort.  And I did! From now on, bacon is easy enough, we can have it on school mornings!

I started with a baked bacon recipe. The idea is brilliant: instead of laboring with a fork over a hot pan of sizzling bacon, put it in the oven, set the timer and walk away. After some experimentation, I came up with several important principles:

• There are two phases to baking bacon: the rendering of the fat and the crisping
• The rendering should take about ten minutes at a temperature of or below 300 F.
• The crisping takes under 5 minutes at  400 F.
• The crisping time is critical and depends on the thickness of the bacon, your particular oven and your preferences with respect to crispiness.

This principles generate a couple methods, each useful for its own circumstances.

Step 1.  Lay it out.

Line the baking sheet with foil to avoid Lay the bacon strips on a baking sheet. Put the sheet in the oven.  (Multiple sheets simultaneously are ok for a lot of bacon!)

Step 2. The baking.

Set the temperature to 400F. Timer to 15 minutes.  Walk away. Come back and peek - wait till it looks as crispy as you like it!  Record the total time for future reference. Done.

Modification A.  Warm oven.  

If you are using an already warm oven, don't despair.

Set the temp to 300 F, timer to 10 minutes.  Come back, set temperature to 400F, timer to five minutes.  After that watch it till it's done.

Congratulations! You have just created the best bacon that has ever resided on your breakfast table, and you can repeat this success every time.  Always be careful when buying a different kind of bacon. Everything depends on the thickness of your slices! And don't forget to come back a little early when you get a new oven or move.

I am thrilled with my results - not the bacon - my husband's pleased face.  He is the pickiest bacon eater and we've had perfect bacon for a whole week!

Honey Mustard chicken nuggets

For the paleo kids!

Actual chicken nuggets
 from this recipe

I've always been disappointed with the almond meal solution when it comes to chicken nuggets.  First of all, almond meal is very dry, often generating nuggets I feel like choking on.  Second, it does not coat evenly and they come out looking kind of scruffy. Finally, they just don't have the right color: dull biege instead of the golden I am used to.

This time, I tried something different and the result was incredible! If you don't believe me, just look at the picture taken as they came out (they are a little paler than in the picture - but the even look it what amazed me). This recipe is for 1 lb of chicken. Quadruple and freeze after cooking for a perfect lunchbox option.

Step 1. The marinade.

1/2 water, 1/4 cup warm honey, 1/4 cup grey poupon mustard, 1 lb chicken. The marinade works very fast and you can leave them there for fifteen minutes. You will be surprised to see that the chicken is turning white as the acid works to cook the outside right in the marinade! The liquid is reduced dramatically as it penetrates the chicken.

Step 2. The coating.

1 cup almond flour; 1/2 tsp dry mustard + optional spices to taste (I like garlic powder, ginger root, palm sugar). Coat the chicken, a few at a time - I saw a much more even coat than when using almond flour alone.

Step 3. The baking.

Line the sheet with foil to reduce cleanup. I did 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Check on them after fifteen minutes. You'll see brown circles forming around the nuggets. When that first happens, it's time for them to come out. Wait a few minutes more - and they are stuck to the bottom!

The nuggets have a vague hint of honey and mustard, barely noticeable. The chicken is sooth and tender, not too dry.  I loved them as much as the kids.  I also made honey mustard sauce by mixing mustard & honey 2:1 for myself. Kids ate them with ketchup. Yum!

Pepper Steak

Here is a go-to quick pepper steak recipe that has been a staple for my family long before paleo and how I adapted it.

Spaghetti:

... squash, that is. Normally, this recipe is served over pasta and rice. Spaghetti squash does quite well - and I don't like eating pepper steak without something to break up the flavor.

Before you start, stick your spaghetti squash in the oven. I prefer baking it sliced in half, rind side up. (I'll also fry it in butter at the end, stay with me.)

Ingredients:

• 1lb flank or chuck steak, cut into strips. 
• 1/2 cup or so worcheshire sauce
• 1 tbsp cooking oil (I like coconut, of course!)
• 1 can mexican tomatoes
• 2 cans beef broth
• 1 bell pepper, diced into strips
• 1 onion, chopped

Cooking:

Heat up the oil. Drown in it worcheshire sauce and cook for 2 min over medium-high heat. The sauce will begin to carmelize, which is what we are going for. Throw in half the onion and cook another 2 minutes.  Add the steak. Brown till... well... it's brown, 5 min or so.

Pour the broth & tomatoes (with the juice) over it. Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes. Uncover and give it another half an hour, allowing the fluid to evaporate, leaving the meat with plenty of au jus.  

Now is the time to get spaghetti out of your spaghetti squash, throw some butter in the pan and fry it for 5-10 minutes. This will prevent it from being quite so watery. I thought, frying was a substantial improvement!

Throw in remaining onion and pepper, toss with the meat, cook 2 more minutes and serve.

 This recipe is festive enough, it's as good for entertaining as it is for a family meal. It is pretty successful with the kids: it does have a kick from the mexican tomatoes, but without being too spicy. The spaghetti squash was voted down as my family is not used to it - but I enjoyed it. Still, it has unusual texture, so be cautious with picky eaters!

Beautiful holiday ham for a busy mom

The best secret my mother-in-law has passed to me is baking ham. Whenever I serve my creation, people take in a sharp breath and ask me if I made it myself.  "Well, it started with a little pig name Pete..." no one wants to hear the rest.

The truth is, it's the easiest recipe I have in my repertoire. Before Paleo, I kept it handy for pretending I knew how to cook when we had company.

Ingredients: Ham.

Yeah, really!  One problem, though. Grocery stores frequently fail to carry ham during the off-season.  I found out, Costco has them all year round, cheap and beautiful! While you are there, I recommend picking up a stack of "catering" pans - think, foil roasting pans. Really, you don't want to have to clean the pan after a good meal, do you?

Fill the pan with 3 in or so of water. Put the ham face down in it. Sprinkle some love & joy. (That's not a special spice, it has to come from the inside!) Set your oven to 350F, timer to 2 1/2 - 3 hours and take your kids to the park.

When you come back, you'll have a delicious dinner ready for you. I would skip any kind of a glaze - all that sugar! (If you want a sugary treat, pour a little maple syrup over the ham.) It tastes great as-is, with some veggies on the side.

And for the rest of the week, you have a beautiful option for omelets, o'derves, snacks and just about anything else. Oh, and don't forget to save the drippings to add to your ham bone for a delicious soup.  (Coming soon!)

O'derves for lunch get high praise

One of the difficulties of cooking Paleo for a newbie is, well, there is a lot of cooking! You start out with raw ingredients and 4 pans, 3 pots & 7 dirty bowls later, you have a meal. Seriously? Three meals a day? Yes, mom, I know, that's how you had to do it too. But I was very quickly overwhelmed.

Then I discovered "sliced bread" of Paleo! You know, those cute little things at corporate events and weddings that one just cannot resist? Really, how much does it truly matter what's in it when it's on this dainty little toothpick? One can pick it up, play with it, eat it - it's equally good for gray hair in tuxedos & bottomless toddlers running around the house.

Ingredients: cold meat, raw veggies, cheese.

Here are a few options I've created that got the most "orders" from the crowd:

• A slice of hot dog & a bell pepper square on a toothpick
• Ham and cheese melt: three squares: baked ham, cheddar cheese, baked ham. Toasted for 5 minutes. Yum!
• Alternating circular slices: hot dog, string cheese, hot dog... Looks as much fun as it tastes!
• Ham, avocado, bell pepper, ham

You get the idea. I had to make them again and again! I seriously needed a break from heavy cooking today. It was a blast!