Ok, so I’ve kind of been kind of slacking on updates lately…been crazy busy with my brother on vacation! I did manage to cook up some yummy grub last night which I stole from other sites!
Ginger Lime Chicken from Paleo Magazine and Roasted Butternut squash from Health-Bent.com. Good stuff!! Post again soon 🙂
How is everyone doing? I hope all of you are well. I’m all alone this weekend, so have a chance to try out some new things to cook! I’m reading an awesome book right now called “Why We Get Fat,” I’ll make sure and post a review once I’m done.
Got back from rounding at the hospital this morning and was quite hungry. Ran by the grocery and picked up some Chicken apple sausages and served them with a spinach salad I whipped up.
Tonight I decided to try something fun. There are so many Puerto Rican dishes that I grew up eating, and I’m convinced that many of them can be converted to Paleo. This evening I made traditional Vaca Frita (Literally, fried cow) and Puerto Rican style “Cauliflower Rice.” Honestly, I have to say, this may have been the best Paleo meal I’ve come up with yet!!
I started with taking a whole flank steak and slicing it in two. I threw it in the old pressure cooker with a bay leaf and 4-5 peppercorns. I filled it half full of water, cranked her up, and let it go at pressure for 45 minutes. I let the pressure die down and once they cooled, I removed the steaks and shredded them and set the meat aside.
Next I started on the Cauliflower. Normally I would make steamed rice and Puerto Rican flavored kidney beans. What I decided to do was to make Cauliflower Rice, but use the flavoring I would normally make the beans with! Start by making a traditional sofrito. In a food processor add half a yellow onion, 1/3 a sweet bell pepper, two large garlic cloves, 1/2 t of oregano, and 1 t salt. Process until pretty smooth. Add the sofrito to a pan with a good dose of olive oil and fry gently until the flavors come together. Next process the cauliflower until the consistency you want…basically rice like. Add the cauliflower to the pot along with a cup of chicken stock and a packet of Goya Sazon Seasoning. It’s not completely paleo I’m sure as it has a little MSG, but there is no flavor substitute! Cook this down, add a little salt to taste, and turn your attention to the meat.
Slice an onion up thinly, and add it to a pan with olive oil with the heat up high. Add the shredded beef and season with salt, pepper, and just a sprinkling of cumin. Fry the meat, moving often until it gets nice and crispy. You are looking for around half crispy and half moist. Be aggressive with the heat to get the right flavor! Serve, and enjoy!
How is everyone doing on this Valentine’s Day?? Hope all are well. Kourt and I had our Valentine’s dinner last night, so we were home tonight and I cooked for the kids. A few other goodies first though.
For those who don’t know, I’m Puerto Rican by heritage. We eat LOTS of plantains, and I have vivid memories of eating very ripe plantains for breakfast with my eggs. So, enter a perfect Paleo breakfast. You want the plantain to be so ripe, you think it’s rotting! (Completely black) Just slice it, and fry it up in coconut oil.
Next for dinner tonight I made baked chicken. Now there are many out there who seem to be afraid of baking a whole chicken…but you can’t beat it! They are cheap, and taste better than any boneless skinless anything out there. This is how I have always baked my chickens, no alterations needed for paleo!
Wash the chicken’s very well in cold water and pat dry. Slice a shallot in half, and stuff half into the cavity of each bird (I always make two so I have left overs). Also throw in 3-4 thyme sprigs and rosemary sprigs from the backyard (or supermarket). I buy grass fed butter (which has a VERY favorable omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acid ratio, and universally accepted in paleo in moderation) and rub it all over the birds. Last I season liberally with salt and pepper. You can use your imagination and season as you see fit! Preheat oven to 375 F Convection (400F conventional) and place birds in on a rack breast side up. Cook for 20 minute, flip them over, cook for 30 minutes, then flip back over until done. Around 20 more minutes. Remove from the oven and let rest 10-15 minutes. Carve and Serve! It’s just so easy, even a caveman can do it….sorry for that.
Ok, so last…I have had basically nothing resembling a “treat” in 6 weeks, and it’s valentine’s day, so I made Paleo Chocolate Chip Cookies! They were from the book Make it Paleo, and they were amazing!
And I threw in a picture of me and my little man at his Valentine’s day party! Hope all had a wonderful day!!!
Hello everyone, hope everyone was able to make it out to the Green market today at the museum! I took the kids cause the wife wasn’t feeling well. We were a bit late, and the line was long. The kids were freezing, and I made it about two minutes of the kids swearing they were turning into Popsicles before I caved and went home…empty handed. On to next week…
I did manage to cook today, and I use a Nom Nom Paleo recipe as a guide. I pretty much followed the recipe except I added two turnips to the mix. Kids actually ate some, and all were happy with things! Hope you guys can try it out some time.
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!
Before I forget, I wanted yall to notice the recipe index tab above. Â I’m adding links to all the recipes I post under this section to make it easy to find them over time. Â I have nothing but plans to grow this blog over time, and one day the organization will help everyone find what they need much faster! Â On to the food..
If you are all like me, it’s hard some days to find time to eat a complete breakfast when you are on the go. I love a good frittata, but often gotta get the kiddos to school before I could ever finish one! Enter the muffin frittata (Nom Nom Paleo is apparently obsessed with them). This morning it’s just me and the kids, so I decided to take my first crack at baking me up some individual frittata’s with the hope of eating a few in the mornings this week for breakfast when I’m running short on time.
Pre-Heat the oven to 375 F. Here is what I assembled for the job. Half a pound of ground turkey, two shallots, a yellow pepper, a can of red pimentos, Madras Curry Powder, 1/4 cup of coconut milk, coconut flour, and 6 eggs.
Next I heated up a little olive oil and cooked up the peppers and shallots until just tender. I added the turkey and seasoned liberally with salt and the curry powder. Saute until just a bit crispy on the edges.
In the mean time I sprayed a non-stick muffin tray with coconut oil spray and whipped up the egg mixture. Just whip the eggs with the coconut milk and a bit of coconut flour. Fill each muffin cup with the meat mixture, then top off with egg mixture to reach almost the top.
Pop these in the oven for 12 minutes, then rotate the tray 180 degrees and bake an additional 5-6 minutes. Immediately after taking them out of the oven I ran a sharp knife around the edge of each muffin to make sure it did not stick…then I crossed my fingers.
After around 10 minutes I GENTLY removed each frittata to a cooling tray. To my great surprise, I did not have to be that gentle after all as they held together very well and did not stick at all! The possibilities are endless here on good flavor combinations…I will certainly be experimenting more with these and think they’ll be a big hit on busy mornings!
Oh, and I had some left over meat mixture, so while these baked, and I was hungry, I made some quick scrambled eggs and chowed them down before the frittatas were even done 🙂
Greetings all! Hope all are well. Tonight I took my basic baked chicken recipe and changed it up by using spanish smoked paprika, or Pimenton as the major flavor.
Start by putting together a marinade with 2 chopped shallots, 1 garlic clove, 2 T Sherry Vinegar, 2 T Olive Oil, and your chicken pieces (I used 6 Drumsticks and 4 Thighs) which I seasoned liberally with salt and the Pimenton. Put in all in a ziplock bag and marinate for a few hours to overnight.
When you are ready to start cooking, Pre-Heat the oven to 400 F Convection,  divide up a head of cauliflower into florets, quarter a container of mushrooms, and roughly chop a yellow onion. Place these at the bottom of a large oven safe casserole, season with salt and pepper, and top with the chicken pieces skin side down. Add a scant 1 cup of chicken stock to the dish making sure to pour between the chicken pieces as to not take the seasoning off the chicken. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, then flip the chicken over for an additional 35 minutes in the oven.
While the chicken bakes, hardboil an egg and peel it. In a bowl combine a tablespoon of grainy mustard, 3 tablespoons of good Sherry Vinegar, and a little salt and Pepper.
Whisk in 4-5 Tablespoons of good olive oil until you make a very loose vinegarette.
Cut and trim some relatively thin asparagus spears and get some water boiling in a shallow pan that has a cover you can use.
Steam the asparagus till just tender and plate. Pour the vinegarette over the top while they are still hot so they absorb it better, and sprinkle the chopped up egg over the whole mess. It’s so YUM!
Once the chicken is done, remove it from the pot and let the veggies cook in the oven for around ten minutes, replace the chicken on top, reheat in the oven a few minutes, and take it to the table! The chicken is perfectly done, and the cauliflower and mushrooms have absorbed all the delicious fat from the chicken baking above.
Whole family gave it an A Plus, hope yall can try it! I’m telling you guys, eating Paleo does not have to be boring. It’s also not hard at all to put together these recipes. Can’t wait to figure out what to make tomorrow night!
I wasn’t sure how this was going to come out last night, but it was great! The deer sausage had a nice smoky flavor and the almond flour roux gave it a nutty undertone. This Paleo gumbo was adapted from Paul Prudhomme’s recipe (seriously!). Serve over chopped cauliflower and you don’t even miss the rice!
I love beef jerky, and it makes so much sense from the Paleo standpoint. Problem is that almost all the jerky you can find commercially has tons of preservatives, and almost always soy sauce. So, I stole my mom’s food dehydrator and this what I got! Was tasty indeed.
Marinade:
2 T Coconut Aminos
2 T Pure Agave Syrup
2 T Warm Water
2 T Apple Cider Vinegar
1 t Curry Powder
1 t Salt
1 t Pepper
Slice up any cut of lean beef into thin strips and marinate them for a few hours. Then put them on the food dehydrator and dry until you like the texture. Much cheaper, much healthier, and much better tasting than what comes in a bag!
Saw a recipe on the web for a baked chicken, and I kind of changed it up to my liking. Seriously yall, try this recipe…it’s the bomb. Kourt and the kids took it down in no time. If you could only smell what my kitchen smells like at the moment…
Paleo Chicken Madeira with Mushrooms
INGREDIENTS
5 to 6 Organic Chicken Drumsticks
4 Organic Chicken Thighs (Bone In)
3 Shallots
1 Clove Garlic
6 oz Mushrooms
3 T Madeira Wine (Or Marsala)
3 T Olive Oil
2 T Sherry Vinegar
1 T Coconut Aminos
Salt and Pepper
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375 F Convection (400 F conventional) with the rack in the middle of the oven.
2. Peel and roughly chop shallots and garlic clove. With food processor blade running, drop in the garlic clove, and sections of shallot one at a time to achieve a fine consistency. Salt and Pepper the chicken. Place chicken into a gallon size ziplock bag along with the shallots/garlic mixture, sherry, Madeira, olive oil, and aminos. Let marinate in the fridge from 30 minutes to overnight. I only let it sit half an hour, and it was awesome.
3. Once you are ready to make the chicken, place the pieces skin side down in a large oven proof baking dish and place in the oven. After 20 minutes flip the chicken pieces over and top them with the mushrooms. Place back into the oven for 25 more minutes or until crispy. Serve hot with your choice of side and plenty of the resulting sauce spooned over the chicken.
PaleoHikerMD 