Greetings all, I haven’t posted, but I’ve been busy! Thought I would post a few things I’ve cooked recently, so here we go.
I went over to a friend’s that I’ve convinced to eat paleo, and she asked me to help her cook a paleo chicken meal. We ate Chicken Marsala, Spaghetti Squash, and a Warm Spinach Salad. But, for dessert I wanted to pre-make some cookies. I honestly can’t remember the recipe cause I kind of made it up, but they were mainly made with apples, coconut, almonds, and raisins. They weren’t bad at all…almost had a macaroon taste to them.
I also have started at looking at re-creating some of the Puerto Rican foods I grew up eating, but adapting them to the paleo lifestyle. A classic Latin American dish is called Picadillo, which is a savory ground meat mixture typically served over rice, along side plantains or yucca, or stuffed into peppers. It’s absolutely yum. You may look at it and think…green olives and raisins in the same dish?? Trust me, its a hit! Get a big dutch oven and brown 3 pounds of ground beef till its cooked through. Drain the excess grease from the pot. Add in a chopped yellow onion and 2-3 garlic cloves and cook for a few minutes. Next add a can of chopped green olives stuffed with pimentos, 2 cups of raisins, two chopped bell peppers, two cans of tomato paste, a good bunch of cilantro, a heaping T of cumin, and a T of salt. Cook for around 30 minutes until it’s to your liking. Taste and readjust the seasoning. Like I said, serve this over cauliflower “rice”, stuff peppers with it, pan-fry up some very ripe plantiains…or whatever. I’ve also going to experiment and try to come up with a Picadillo Meatloaf! Just try it!
Last, one of our good friends is sick, and I wanted to take her some chicken soup to make her feel better. Now of course I can’t use a Noodle soup, so went with a different approach! I had to chicken carcasses left over from the Marsala the other night, so I through them into the pressure cooker with enough water to fill the cooker around 2/3 of the way full. I got it going and cooked it for an hour at pressure. I let the pressure settle and opened up the pot…what amazing chicken stock in an hour! I removed the carcasses and (fairly painstakingly) picked all the meat that was left after cutting away the main pieces of the chicken. To the stock I added a can of fire roasted tomatoes that I whizzed up with my immersion blender, a chopped up onion, two carrots I sliced paper thin with my mandolin right into the pot, 1 t Cumin, 1 t garlic powder, 1 1/2 T salt, 1/2 t oregano and 10 green olives sliced pretty thin. I let that all simmer for around 20 minutes, and done! To serve I just threw in some chopped up avocado and it was YUM! It’s like tortilla soup without the Tortillas!
So that’s it for tonight. I’m trying to keep you guys as informed as I can about my cooking adventures, and it’s actually quite fun! If you haven’t figured it out, I love to cook. Most of my recipes are mine, or significantly tweaked to my liking! Get cooking, it’s the only way to Paleo!
PaleoHikerMD 
