On the Menu: August 26-Sept 1

This is the vegetarian/piscean two weeks again, meaning no meat other than fish, and no dairy. This is also the week that Thadd went back to school, and I started some certification training on top of my other stuff; so, we knew we needed meals that would be reasonably quick, too.

In addition to all that, Thadd’s been having problems maintaining his weight with the two weeks of vegetarian foods (especially since we eat little in the way of simple carbs), and is pretty continually hungry.  The reality has been similar for me, and I’m not looking to lose weight. We don’t eat processed foods, we have to be careful on the soy because it interferes with my adrenal medications, and it kills me to not eat cheese. On the other hand, my abs look awesome; but, I have to be very careful to not to lose much weight (about 3% of my body weight) or it messes with my medication dosages.

I’ll be honest, this new diet two weeks a month is difficult, especially on limited time. We’re not sure how it’s going to go,  but, this is our stab at it for the first week of back-to-school and new work stuff. Wish us luck!

DINNERS: 

Sunday: Potato & Cauliflower Burritos, with sausage for Thadd. These have more carbs than I usually like, but it’s what we have time for tonight. And, they’re really yummy.

Monday: Slow cooker Thai Tempeh Coconut Curry.  Tempeh needs wet cooking, in my opinion, to be good. Dry tempeh is…well, dry. I have to be really, really careful about soy; but, I can treat myself once in a great while, and this is that treat.

Tuesday: Ban Mi Sandwiches.  Another tofu dish, but this one is okay. Non-GMO tofu locally processed at low temps by hand, which helps limit some of the things that interfere with the absorption of my medications.  This is a vegetarian take on a Vietnamese street food that I’ve been wanting to try forever.

Wednesday: Slow Cooker Lentil & Kale Stew, with Bratwurst for Thadd. This is a Cook’s Illustrated recipe, which bodes well. Again, a new one for us. While we eat a lot of meatless meals, we don’t tend to do a lot of meat-and-dairy-free meals, so I’ve been digging through recipes for the last few months.

Thursday: Slow Cooker Chickpea Curry. Indian is always one the top of my list of vegetarian foods to love!

Friday: Leftovers.

Saturday: Lentil Sloppy Joes with Slow Cooked Baked Beans and Veggies. A vegan (yes, vegan) take on sloppy joes.  I’ll see what I get for fresh veggies from the market, and I’ll make my own bakes beans in the slow cooker.

 Shawn

LUNCHES:  leftovers. Vegetarian salads with chickpeas for protein.  Tuna and egg salad.

BREAKFASTS:  eggs, egg and veggie breakfast burritos, steel cut oats, fruit.

SNACKS: hardboiled eggs, roasted chickpeas, nuts, raw vegetables, fruit, olives, almond butter.

Thadd

LUNCHES:  Leftovers. Meat, tuna, and egg salad wraps.  Frozen meals (we freeze lunch portions of leftovers, so we have some already in the freezer).

BREAKFAST:  Breakfast casserole, sausage breakfast burritos, steel cut oats, yogurt, fruit.

SNACKS: Smoothies, nuts, milk, yogurt, fruit, olives, peanut butter, cheese.

Related articles

• On the Menu, August 5-11th (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)

What I Eat, Series Launch

In the time I’ve been writing here, consulting with and cooking for clients, talking fitness nutrition at various gyms, and just interacting with people, it’s come to my attention that a lot of people haven’t ever really been exposed to what a “normal” food lifestyle really looks like. They see fad diet meal plans, or “dinner” on Food Network. They have no idea what a real, healthy person eats on a daily basis, and how it fits into overall life.

So, I am starting a new series: “What I Eat.” It won’t be every day, but it will be often. It’ll be short, there will be no recipes, but hopefully it will give readers an idea of what a day in my food-life looks like. Somedays there’ll be photos, some days it’ll just be me writing on the fly. Through this, I hope readers can get a better understanding of how cooking works, how food planning works, how it falls apart (and yes, it falls apart for us, too, sometimes), and how real food can fit into real life. On days I have challenges with food, I’ll try to note that, too, and how I dealt (or didn’t deal) with it.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this, and if it’s helpful for you.

Jan 10:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, banana, glass of raw milk.

Snack: almond milk and peanut butter shake (using my Magic Bullet blender. God I love this thing).

Lunch: leftover roasted squash soup, grapes, hard boiled egg.

Random snacks: roasted almonds, a few slices of aged gouda, a grapefruit (I have no idea why, but since I’ve discovered I now like them, I can’t stop eating them), a glass of raw milk, lots of water (I have no idea how much),

Dinner: Salisbury steak w/lots of mushrooms, whipped potatoes with cream cheese and milk, roasted broccoli.

FOOD CHALLENGE: I am trying very hard to eat less grain, but today all I really wanted was a huge slab of Thadd’s homemade wheat bread. I didn’t do it, but it was difficult.

Related articles

• On the Menu: Jan 7-13th (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• The Big Waste: Food Network Looks at Food Waste in America (eatdrinkbetter.com)

On the Menu: Jan 7-13th

The cookies, cakes, pies, and whatever else made it’s way onto my plate this past holiday season is all gone now. If you’ve been reading me for more than a little while, you’ve probably read a mention or two of how easily it is for me to become sugar addicted. It doesn’t take me long to break it anymore (typically about 3-4 days), and once I do I go totally off any interest in sugar for quite a while (which is good). So, you won’t see much in the way of sweets here (not, I suppose, that you ever really do except during holidays).

I’m also kicking my training up a notch, so you’ll see a bit more protein here than you sometimes do. My body isn’t a high-protein machine for whatever reason. In the past, its tended to make me feel pretty icky to up my protein intake as much as is recommended, no matter what form the protein took. I’m going to try some new things this time, to see if I can work in more protein and good fats, and less grains. I’ll still be eating my veggies, but I’m going to try to really ratchet down the grains (yes, even whole grains), and try to rely on mostly veggies for my carbohydrates. I’m not going paleo–Thadd bakes for a living, if nothing else–but, I think it’s worth a shot again. This time, I’m going to try more bio-available protein like egg whites, instead of increasing my dairy. Hopefully that, in conjunction with lots of vegetable fiber, will help my body process better.

So, here it is! The first On the Menu of 2012!

DINNERS

Sunday: Chicken Makhani, with spinach and brown rice. I’ll be eating very little of the rice, which is fine, since I love the chicken!

Monday: Catfish with cauliflower augratin.

Tuesday: Salisbury Steak, with whipped potatoes and broccoli. Lots of mushrooms make this one of my favorites dishes.

Wednesday: Tuscan white bean soup with kale. A great crockpot meal that also happens to be some of the best soup I’ve ever made. It’s hearty, healthy, and can be vegetarian or vegan.

Thursday: Ethiopian. Yep, this will have the concession of bread. We don’t do Ethiopian often. It’s time-consuming. But, it’s completely worth it. We’ll be having Doro Wat for sure, one of the lentil dishes, a potato dish, and a greens dish. And, of course, the yummy flatbread, injera.

Friday. Balsamic roasted chicken, with apple-and-onion hash and a vegetable.

LUNCHES: Egg and almond milk shakes for after workouts, leftovers.

BREAKFASTS: Scrambled eggs & egg cups, omelets, yogurt w/fruit and local honey.

SNACKS: fruit, cheese, cottage cheese, carrots & homemade dip,

Related articles

• On the Menu, Sept. 19th Edition (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• On the Menu, Sept 10-18 (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• On The Menu {week of Jan. 8} (easypaleo.com)
• Dishes with a Difference (ethiopianfood.wordpress.com)

Weekend In a Cooler: Guest Blogger Challenge!

Why is my text blue? Is something wrong with your eyes, or perhaps WordPress went wonky? No, dear reader, everything is just as it should be. My text is blue because I need to differentiate it from my guest blogger’s. Yep, a guest blogger! So, for the next week-and-a-half or so, my text will be blue, and my guest blogger’s will be black. It’ll keep things a bit more organized. Who, you ask, is this mysterious guest blogger? Well, settle into your comfy chair, grab a cold glass of hibiscus lemonade, and read on…

LET THE GAMES BEGIN

My friend, fellow foodie, and fabulous cook, Gaylin over at More Than Just the Food, sent me an email a few weeks ago with a link to this article from Cooking Light “1 Cooler, 1 Weekend Getaway.” They created 5 meals for a weekend that fit into just one cooler and a tote. Since she was taking a Memorial Day trip herself, this caught her attention. Both of us are local, real food nuts (I mean that in the fondest possible way), and while the authors of this article did a great job, she was pretty sure she could go one better and use a lot of local, seasonal foods. She asked if I was interested in helping put this together. Let’s see..a good friend and great cook who shares my love of real food proposes an interesting challenge. How could I say no? In addition to the rules set in Cooking Light, which we wanted to follow, she had some challenge condition of her own, too (remember, Gaylin’s posts, text, and comments will be in black for the duration of this series).

• The food has to survive travel well.
• In general, I’d like it to consist of what’s in season and even highlight it.
• I’d rather use stuff I can get at my farmer’s market if possible.
• I’d like it to be cost-friendly, but my definition and other people’s in this arena are different. Food costs money. Crap doesn’t.

We live several states apart, so most of our planning was going to be via email; but, we decided to do the initial bit via phone. The first order of business was to figure out what ingredients she had to use up:

shredded broccoli
shredded zucchini
venison
spinach
leek–maybe 4 x 5″chunks
asparagus
sorrel
bacon
milk
3 eggs
frozen vegetables
frozen fruit
Nutella (homemade from toasted almonds!)

We had to plan on the hotel they were staying in only having a microwave, and everything had to be easily assembled or pre-cooked. With all this in mind, it was on to the brainstorming, which yielded all kinds of ideas—some usable, some not. We needed 3 dinners, two lunches, three breakfasts, desserts, and drinks. And it all had to fit into the cooler. Of course, as she said, “It really is a big damned cooler. Coleman Xtreme, 70 quarts or some such.” which made things a bit easier. We hung up, and each got to work planning healthy, local, seasonal menus:

My Menu

Dinners: 3
1. Zucchini gnocchi with light lemon cream sauce, and broccoli slaw.Uses: zucchini, gnocchi, cream, leeks, brocoli. Other: olive oil, dressing, carrots.
2. Venison/chicken/lamb tikka masala.Uses: meat of your choice, cream/yogurt, rice, any vegetables. Other: spices, onions, garlic
3. Dinner salad with salmon.Uses: salmon, salad fixin’s. Other: homemade vinaigrette.

Lunches: 2
1. Bacon Salad Rice Wraps. Uses: spinach, asparagus, zucchini, sorrel, boiled egg. Other: rice wraps, mushroom, red onions, red wine vinegar.
2. Turkish lunch. Uses: cooked salmon, olives, leeks (caramelized), iced fruit salad. Other: bagels, hearty bread, or crackers, good cheese.

Breakfasts: 3
1. Yogurt with granola. Uses: raw yogurt, granola, fruit.
2. Hot cereal.Uses: granola, raw milk, fruit.
3. Whole grain pancakes with berry filling. Uses: berries, grains. Other: flours/grains, spices.

Desserts: 3
1. Nutella filled pastries with fruittopping.Uses: nutella, fruit, puff pastry.
2. Balsamic strawberry shortcake. Uses: balsamic vinegar, sugar/honey, strawberries. Other: cake/shortcake/etc. Additionally, strained/Greek yogurt is an awesome addition to this.

3. Cardamom Indian Rice pudding.Uses: raw milk, yogurt, or cream, rice. Other: raisins, spices, saffron, sweetener (I like honey). Rose water optional.

Snacks:
1. Chili, black sea salt, and lime roasted garbanzo beans
2. Salted nut mix
3. Empanadas and/or zucchini personal pastries
4. Assorted cheeses & sliced hard meats
5. Cinnamon and vanilla nuts or chai-coco roasted (pecans, almonds, walnuts work well)
6. Boiled eggs with Indian bbq rub

Drinks:
1. Coffee
2. Mudled strawberry mojitos
3. Strawberry martinis
4. Strawberry lemonade squishes
5. Rhubarb spritzer (do you have rhubarb there yet?)
6. Sangria!

Gaylin’s Menu

Dinner:
1. Thai couscous vegetable wraps. Uses broccoli, zucchini, sorrel, eggs, mushrooms, peas (I found some!), couscous. I was looking for something light to eat the first night, and if I make some extra, we’ll have some to pass around as a dish while visiting.
2. Spinach gnocchi with bacon and roasted asparagus tips. Uses gnocchi, bacon, leeks, asparagus.
3. Venison, mushroom empañadas with chard and spinach salad. Uses venison, mushrooms, swiss chard, spinach, some fruit for dressing.

Lunches:
1. Turkish lunch. Salmon as the centerpiece, zucchini galettes, cheeses on the side. Hearty bread. Capers, olives a must. Maybe boiled eggs. Figs (we have some) and dried apricots.
2. Cold noodle primavera. Uses mushrooms, asparagus, peas, leeks, bacon.

Breakfasts:
1. Yogurt with granola. Uses raw milk, granola, fruit.
2. Breakfast scones with fruit sauce and almond butter. Uses grains, fruit, and the almond butter that slipped to the back of the fridge.
3. Make-ahead fruit smoothies. Uses yogurt and fruit and the last of the homemade peach ice cream in the freezer.

Desserts:

1. Mini fruit-filled pastries. Uses nutella, fruit, puff pastry. Maybe enough to share with others.
2. Balsamic strawberry shortcake. Because hot damn that sounded awesome.
3. Nutella brownies. Uses nutella and nuts. Another dish to eat and to pass.

Drinks:
1. Coffee. I’ve confirmed an in-room coffee maker.
2. Muddled strawberry mojitos.
3. Bloody Marys. Our bloody mary mix is the best and it’s made right here in town!
4. Sangria.
5. Bottled wines.

Gaylin took a look at all the factors, from time to cost to cooler fit, and came up with the final menu:

• A selection of hard cheeses from the farmer’s market and grocery. My favorite was the truffled white cheese from Farm Country Cheese House in Lakeview, Michigan.
• A selection of mixed, brined and spiced olives. We can’t get olives at the farmer’s market, so I get mine from our little locally owned grocery store, Holiday Market, in Royal Oak, Michigan. I can ride my bike there from our house.
• A selection of hearty bread rolls from the farmer’s market. We got the rolls from Herman’s Bakery, one of the last and most dependable local bakeries around. They sell at the market, but their actual store front resides in the oldest commercial building in the downtown area. Every time I buy from them at the market, they ask after “The Big Guy” and send along a special treat for him.
• Dried Figs and Apricots. I get these from the heart of Detroit just across the parking lot from the longest running open air market in Michigan, Detroit’s Eastern Market. The company is the Rocky Peanut Company. Until we’re able to grow our own figs, we’ll likely buy them from the twins grandsons that run the nut counter here. Charming gentlemen willing to talk for hours about their products. I love that.
• Zucchini Galettes. This was such a fantastic way to use up a large amount of last year’s harvest.
• Spinach Gnocchi with Asparagus and Peppered Bacon. We ended up eating this cold because there was no microwave at the hotel and it was still incredibly good.
• Squid Ink Pasta with Fresh Spring Veggies. Don’t make the face about the squid ink; it just makes the pasta beautifully black in color. It tastes nothing like squid nor ink. The light lime cream sauce really tied everything together. This was some of the best primavera I’ve ever made.
• Vegetarian Spring Rolls. These were hands down my scariest and favorite dish to make.
• Venison, Wild Mushroom, and Caramelized Onion Empañadas. We harvested the venison ourselves.
• Rawmilk Yogurt. I love how hands-free this recipe is.
• Clean the Cupboards Granola. A favorite of ours because it uses up so much stuff.
• Bloody Mary’s made with our favorite locally made mix from McClure’s Pickles (run, don’t walk, and buy anything they sell) and vodka from a new locally sourced spirits vendor, Valentine Vodka (we admit we bought it for the label first and the local sourcing and flavors after we realized how good it was). They use all Michigan grown grains!
• Frozen Fruit Booze Smoothies. All those last little bags of berries and stone fruits that weren’t going to get made into baked goods went into this drink. And I finally used up the last of the rediscovered homemade peach ice cream.
• Faux Nutella Cake Brownies. I made the nutella-substitute from roasted almonds, again from Rocky Peanut Company.
• Wine. More wine. And more wine. So many bottles of wine they took up their own travel case. We had an amazing party around the hotel’s swimming pool.
• Coffee. Yes we really brought our own once we confirmed the in-room coffee maker. Ours doesn’t come from a local roaster because we’ve not yet found one that sources ethically. Until we do, we’ll continue to get ours from the Caribou Coffee down the street from our house because we can guarantee that it’s not only organic, but ethically harvested and certified by the Rainforest Alliance.

I know, makes you hungry just reading it, doesn’t it? Aside from getting her the empanada crust recipe and some quick tips about using rice wraps, my part was done for the moment. It was on to preparation, and while I was there in spirit, her and her Chef’s Jacket did the hard work without me (not that I wouldn’t have loved to have pitched in, but a 14 hour drive stood between me and mixing empanada dough). 

How did it go? In the next several days, you can read for yourself. Gaylin will be doing most of the blogging, so feel free to ask any questions or leave comments in the comments section. There will be recipes, food porn,, thoughts on local ingredients and where to find them, and comments on the challenge from both of us:

Feel free to chime in and let us know what you like, or what you’d have done differently.

On the Menu, June 13th Edition

Yes, I realize it’s the 15th, but since this plan starts on Monday, I’m calling it the 13th. What are we eating this week?

Dinners

Monday:  Lasagna with ciabatta bread and spicy greens salad. This is my special recipe lasagna, which is made with all real, no fat-free anything, yet manages to still have about half the calories of most lasagna. And,  it’s one of my most requested recipes, too. I actually made two of these, one for the freezer, to really make use of the oven space.  We got an amazing harvest of mixed greens, complete with spicy mustards, that will be paired with fresh strawberries and cucumber for the salad. It’s all topped off with Thadd’s amazing Ciabatta.

Tuesday: Shape-It-Up Meatloaf with whipped potatoes and broccoli.  Made this on Monday (also made two), again to utilize oven space. I admit to using my client’s menus to inspire my own, since I typically have all the spices out anyway, and one got my meatloaf this week. This works our well, since Tuesdays are a late night for me. We’ve had some potatoes and broccoli that needed using, and this was what they went best in.

Wednesday: Thai peanut tofu noodles. Thadd’s been wanting this for a while, so I put it on the rotation.

Thursday: Black bean & Yam burritos. You’re right, there’s a good bit of vegetarian on the menu this week.  We eat a lot of vegetarian anyway, but this week  it just seemed to fall out that we’re eating more than usual. We love these burritos, inspired by Seva in Ann Arbor.

Friday: Sausage lentil soup. Quick, easy, hearty, and makes a lot of leftovers. We prefer red lentils for this.

Saturday: Leftovers. Clean out the refrigerator day.

Sunday:  Saag and samosa pie. The mustard greens for this dish are from the garden. The samosa pie is a much easier way to do Indian samosas, and I’m also making a mango and basil chutney (it should really be cilantro, but since Thadd has that weird genetic it-tastes-like-soap thing, I substitute basil). And, thought it looks it, this isn’t quite vegetarian. The saag uses homemade chicken stock.  This will finish off our potatoes, use up those yummy greans, and allow me to crock-pot chickpeas so I don’t have to use canned (writes that down on the kichen schedule). Thadd’ll make the crust for the pie.

What are you eating this week?

Related articles

• An Old Towne Time, and On the Menu (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• On the Menu, Staying Cool Edition (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• Grain Free Week & On the Menu (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)
• How is That Frugal? (eclecticedibles.wordpress.com)

The Ultimate Kitchen Tool

Eating well on a limited budget takes organization, and a commitment to preparation even when you don’t feel like it. I am not perfect about this by any means, and I realized that I’d stopped utilizing one of the two practices that keeps us eating well and still paying rent: the kitchen schedule.

I used to be really good about this, but for whatever reason I’ve just stopped. Sunday, while making our menu plan, I realized that there’s a lot more we could be doing to keep our food local, healthy, and inexpensive, but we’d just not been doing it. We often blame it on “lack of time,” and while that is somewhat true, it’s really more often a lack of preparation.  Seriously, it takes 30 seconds to put beans in the slow cooker, so “lack of time” is a pretty lame excuse. This is where the kitchen schedule comes in. Essentially, it’s a list of what needs to get done, and in many cases when it needs to get done, to maximize our time in the kitchen.

I’m expanding this to include a garden schedule, because the two things are so connected for us. I don’t want my lovely basil, tomatoes, or other ingredients that we’ve worked so hard to grow going to waste. I also needed to add some tasks that I’ve neglected, like sprouting, in. So, what does a kitchen schedule look like?

Kitchen & Garden Schedule

Monday

Tuesday

• Wilt mustard leaves and freeze

• thaw tofu

• Make aphid spray

• Spray off plants with hose, then aphid spray.

Wednesday

• Crock pot 1 lb. black beans in water

• Spray for aphids

• Thaw chickpeas

Thursday

• Weed garden.

• Make aphid spray

• Spray off plants with hose, then aphid spray.

• Make hummus

• Boil eggs

Friday

• Spray for aphids

• Soak mung beans for sprouts

• Crock pot chicken stock

• Flip compost

 Saturday

• Thaw mustard greens

• Spray off plants with hose, then aphid spray.

• Clean our refrigerator

• Start sprouts

Sunday

• Make aphid spray

• Spray for aphids

 

It’s so simple that it almost looks silly, but having it written down where we can see it makes a huge difference in how likely things are to get done. (And yeah, we’ve got an infestation of aphids–fortunately, the vegetable oil-dishsoap spray works brilliantly.)

Creamsickle Lemonaid with Kefir

I should have taken a picture of this, but I didn’t. In part because it never occurred to me that anyone would want the recipe. Ooops. So, I’ve been asked for the recipe, and have nothing pretty to show off my awesome throw-crap-in-a-blender skills. Oh, well, enjoy the smoothie!

-1 Magic Bullet glass. This holds about 16 oz, so go from there if you’re not using this kind of blender.

-ice

-Lemon juice (fresh squeezed is best, but concentrate will do)

-1 tsp (or to taste) Honey, raw if possible

-Berries, about 1/4 cup (I used blueberries and raspberries, but use whatever you want)

-Kefir

-Water

Fill glass about half way with ice. Add lemon juice to fill about 1/4 of the glass. Add berries and honey. Add kefir to bring glass to about 2/3 full, add water to fill remainder. Blend until smooth, add more honey or lemon juice if necessary. Garnish with mint, if desired, or just drink as-is.

This was incredibly refreshing, and while it was just me tossing random things that needed using into the blender, I’ll definitely do it again soon!

Predicting the Demise of Paleo, and What’s On the Menu

Before we get to what we’re eating this week, I thought I’d take a moment to make a prediction. A lot of people are having really amazing results in a variety of areas eating “Paleo,” which essentially means lots of meat and veggies, no grains and little/no sugars other than those naturally occurring in fruits and veggies.  There are a lot of pluses to this lifestyle, and the science behind the results is also pretty good.  That said, The End of that success is coming, just as it has for most diets that start out so well from Atkins to vegetarian.

Why? Because the thing is, when most of these diets/lifestyles/whatever you want to call them come out, what is most effective about them is that they 1) limit your food choices and 2) get you away from processed foods. Unfortunately, as soon as they catch on, so do manufacturers. Which means that both of those things go away, and more and more people flock to the diet because they can now have anything they want again! Except that it doesn’t work that way.

When I was a vegetarian, it was next to impossible to be a fat vegetarian, because your options were fresh vegetables and grains (and, in my case, eggs and dairy because I was lacto-ovum). Fast forward to today, and you can get vegetarian “meat,” which is so processed and full of crap that almost nothing on the label is recognizable. Today, we have lots of fat, unhealthy vegetarians. Yes, there are also healthy vegetarians who eat whole foods and at one time, that was a default of being vegetarian; but, since it’s caught on, the lifestyle itself no longer takes real thought about health. Anyone can “be a vegetarian,” and just go to the store and replace non-vegetarian crap “food” with vegetarian crap “food.”

This was the same with, say, Atkins. It started out being highly effective because it really limited food choices and took away the vast majority of processed foods.  When people have limited food choices, they tend to eat less. This is true of processed foods, as well, and has the added bonus of getting rid of the fat-packing empty calories and weight-gaining chemicals.  Once manufacturers caught on, they started producing “Atkin’s Friendly” crap, which consumers snatched up like the world was ending. Which is when the diet began to fail, because two of it’s primary components of success were taken away for most people (especially those who decided to switch to the Atkins lifestyle without bothering to read the book).

Paleo is catching on. Whatever you think of it’s ethics, it’s also very effective for weight loss and maintenance, at least in part for the same reasons vegetarianism and Atkins initially were. Which means that, if it hasn’t happened already, we’re going to soon see “Paleo friendly” processed junk hitting the market, mostly stuff that wouldn’t otherwise be on the diet. I betcha a dollar to a donut that if it’s not already out there, we’ll see Paleo bread mass-marketed within the net 12 months. Yes, there will still be the people who do it right, but there’ll be a whole lot more who do it wrong. Again. Because they want to believe in magic.

So, with that out of my ranting way, here’s this week’s On the Menu:

Dinners

Sunday:  Chicken tikka masala over saffron rice. Okay, you have to use local or organic chicken with this, just just do. I admit I used neither, since we had some chicken given to us that wasn’t and it needed to get used. It turned out awful. Well, the sauce was great, but the chicken itself was appalling. Every time this happens, I remember why we don’t eat conventional chicken. Ick.

Monday: Sloppy joes with 3-potato salad and green beans.  Mmmm… grass fed beef with homemade sloppy joe sauce. So good! The potato salad was leftover from our weekend picnic with friends, and fresh green beans.  You’re going to notice that most of our menu this week is geared to limited cooking, and some batch cooking. It’s just too darn hot to do anything else!

Tuesday (tonight): Sliced, cold London Broil over fresh greens, with steamed cauliflower. We grilled the London Broil on Sunday, so no cooking tonight. The broil came out great–the grass fed makes a huge difference.

Wednesday: Chicken & vegetable kabobs over black rice. The kabobs were also done on Sunday. We’ll just reheat them quickly, and I’ll make the rice outside on the deck with my rice cooker.

Thursday: Falafel with mujadara. The heat is supposed to break, so we’re making homemade falafel and flatbread, as well as mujadara (an lentil-parsley-rice salad).  I’ll whip up a tzaziki sauce, and it’ll be served with fresh tomatoes.

Friday: Black bean & banana empanadas. It’s time to make a huge batch of these up again and toss them in the freezer for quick lunches.

Saturday: Leftovers day. Time to clean out the refrigerator!

Breakfasts are kefir, yogurt, fruit, granola, eggs, and homemade toast. Lunches are leftovers and smoothies (I don’t eat much when it’s hot out, so I drink a lot of smoothies).

How are you keeping cool and eating well this week?

Related articles

• Getting Serious About My Switch to Paleo: 120 Day Paleo Challenge (momvschaos.com)
• Let’s Un-Process Our Children’s Food (mamainthekitchen.com)

Grain Free Week & On the Menu

I am going grain-free for a week, though Thadd will not be joining me. I thought about blogging my grain-free journey with recipes and everything, and then I realized that the menu really doesn’t look much different from any other menu I post. With the exceptions of homemade (super-yummy) breads, we don’t eat a ton of grains.  When we do, it tends to be quinoa, bulgar, etc., mostly because I like cooking weird stuff.

So, I’ll keep you generally posted, but don’t expect any real revelations. Maybe I should have done this in the winter, when we’re a bit more grain-heavy. Regardless, here’s the menu for the week:

DINNERS

Monday: Seared pork loin with homemade BBQ beans and vinegar & herb 3-potato salad.  This meal was to use up some of the leftovers from our party. I made crockpot beans to go with our burgers (yep, all pastured and local, etc.), and had some leftover. My potato salad is one of my most-requested recipes, and has no dairy. It’s a wonderful combination of cider vinegar, olive oil, and fresh herbs, with lemon zest over the top!

Tuesday:  Asian salmon over zucchini “noodles”,” with large salad. They store had made a mistake in pricing their salmon filets, so I grabbed them! I love making zucchini, beets, spaghetti squash, and other veggies into noodles, and it’s a fun way to get kids to eat their veggies, too! Greens are in hot and heavy right now, so they’re a featured item in many of our meals.

Wednesday: Beef, with whipped sweet potatoes and seasonal vegetable. We just got a load of beef in from one of our favorite farms, and this is Thadd’s night to cook, so he gets to choose what kind of beef we’ll have. I’m going to hit the Green Market to see what’s fresh for our vegetable, and we’ll pull some sweet potatoes out of storage.

Thursday: Duck egg & greens frittata with soup and salad. Organic, free range duck eggs…so good! I’ll put together some “stone soup” from leftovers and homemade stock, and serve it with a big salad of fresh greens, strawberries, and elderberry & sage vinaigrette.

Friday & Saturday: Birthday parties. Lots of birthdays this month! So, the menu is on hold until we hear whether these are cookouts, etc.

Lunches are leftovers for the most part. Breakfasts include some combination of: milk, eggs in some form, cheese, fruit, yogurt, and honey.

What are you eating this week?

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Volume Discount. Or, Stop Playing With Your Food!

We’ve been mislead about how to have a healthy relationship with food. For some reason, we’ve been taught to think that “good” or “healthy” eating and nutrition is about getting the largest volume of food into our stomachs with the least amount of calories. I am not sure where this trend started, but it’s definitely perpetuated in our food marketing, media, and a lot of nutrition advice.  Our society’s idea of nutrition has become about how much sheer volume we can pack into ourselves without “exceeding calories.”

This is not a healthy way to eat. It’s not a healthy relationship for our nation to have with food. If it were, we wouldn’t have the skyrocketing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other lifestyle-related disease rates we do today. The answer is simple, but it goes against the unfortunate American value that “bigger is better,” and the more you have the more you’re worth. Ergo, the more you can eat and stay “skinny,” the better you are, the healthier you must be.

There are many reasons that most people who lose weight put it back on, but one of the biggest is this: they have not changed their relationship with food and food culture. We’ve gotten used to feeling “full” all the time, and believing that it is necessary and good to feel this way. That we should be able to eat large amounts of food without gaining weight. That we all “deserve” to be able to eat whatever we want, whenever we want, and that it’s nutritionally reasonable to poke, pull, and tweak foods to fit into what we want them to be instead of what they are.  That we should be able to eat the way we want to eat, instead of the way we need to eat, without consequences. All of this despite demonstrable evidence that it’s a failing formula.

The fix for this is simple, and the more research that is done, the more it’s holding up: eat quality, whole, nutrient-dense foods, and eat them in an appropriate quantity.

A skin-on, bone-in chicken breast has only 50 or so more calories than it does skin off, and only about 2.5g saturated fats.* If you’re watching your weight, the answer isn’t to skin your chicken to save 50 calories, it’s to eat less chicken or do more exercise. In my last series about nutrition rules, you’ll note I said eat more veggies, and stop eating whole cuts of meat as frequently. Why? Because it makes far more sense to eat more vegetables and get the fiber and nutrients, while eating less meat and dairy but still getting the complete and natural fats, than it does to find “work-arounds.”

But what about those FDA “portion” sizes? It’s important to remember those are generalizations (and, frankly, bad ones). For a smaller/shorter person, a reasonable portion is much less. For a taller/larger person, much more.   Yes, as a small person I’ll be able to eat less skin-on chicken or whole milk than my partner, who is extremely tall, will be able to eat. And, that’s okay. It’s okay to eat less food, or less than than an “FDA” portion of a certain food. It’s okay to stock up on green veggies and take a smaller portion of the whole higher-calorie whole food, of which more and more studies are showing that removing nutrients (including fat) has detrimental effects (or, at the very least, removes potential beneficial effects and essential nutrients). Saturated fats are now being shown to help balance HDL and LDL cholesterol, for example. Which doesn’t mean an overabundance of saturated fats are good for you, either. Again, the answer is simply to eat it, just eat less of it.

This isn’t a new or even radical viewpoint on my part. Pretty much this same thing has been said in countless works on the subject, including the best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat.”  French cuisine isn’t exactly known for it’s use of skim milk, margarine, or skinned chicken. Yet, despite it being a best-seller and making the talk-show rounds, eating habits in the US have not changed. We still demand larger and larger portions, and try to find ways to make those portions contain less and less calories.

And yet, as a nation we continue to wonder why we’re getting fatter and sicker.

(Author’s note: Any inflammatoy/name-calling/trolling posts or off-topic vegan/paleo/locavore/whatever proselytizing comments will be deleted.)

* Info from Julie Upton, dietician writing in “Eating Light” magazine. I don’t have this online, so you’ll need to find the issue for yourself.