Fuel : Paleo Stew

If you're like me (and you probably are if you are eating paleo), you love meat.  And maybe you're feeding a family, and trying to adapt a houseful of standard diet eaters to healthier ways.

Well, this stew wasn't a stretch for my crew.  Nobody complained (or noticed?) that there were no dumplings  - even though  i was a little sad about that - and although i made a huge amount of stew, there weren't enough leftovers for more than two or three people.

Now the leftovers are in the freezer, and i'll write down the very easy recipe in case someone else needs it (or i want to find it again!)

Easy Paleo Moose Stew

4-5 lbs moose
1/2 c. olive oil
8 potatoes
6 carrots
3 stalks of celery
garlic (fresh or granulated)
one onion
thyme
rosemary
oregano
freshly ground black pepper
salt
seasoning salt if desired
red wine
bay leaf

You can also make this with beef!  Or presumably elk, bison, deer, whatever you have :)

In a big pot, pour about a 1/2 c. olive oil.
Heat.

While it is warming up, chop up 3-4 lbs of moose meat into biggish size pieces.  If you chop too small, the little pieces of meat get hard, but larger sized chunks stay tender.

Also, chop up a big onion.

Cook up the onion in the olive oil. Add the beef.  Season with pepper, garlic, seasoning salt (if you want!  I used Costco's applewood seasoning salt), thyme, oregano, rosemary.  (Or whatever spices you like)

While it cooks, stir occasionally so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pot, but let it get nice and brown.

Peel and chop up 8 nice sized potatoes, and six biggish carrots, and  dice three celery stalks.

Dump all veggies in at the same time and let them cook up a little with the meat.

Pour in about 8 cups of water - enough to cover all the meat and veggies, but only just.  Add a couple bay leaves.

Bring to a nice boil, and let it cook on high for an hour or so, with the lid on to keep the moisture level from evaporating.  If you're not pressed for time, turn heat down and let it cook longer....

Pour in a nice glug of red wine (brandy is nice, too).

Mix up good, and use a ladle to take out two cups of stew.  Vitamix that stew till it's a nice and thick slurry.  (Sorry to use that word in a recipe!)

Pour back in the "gravy", and stir up.  Let cook with the lid off if it's too runny.  It will thicken as the liquid evaporates.

Putting in the celery with the potatoes and carrots will make them go mushy and taste of meat.  I like that.  I love it when leeks or celery really take on the taste of the meat they are paired with.

Put stew on the table, pass around the bowls, thank God and dig in!

Fuel: Paleo tips for family meals

I thought i'd take a few posts in a row to update what we're doing with food in our house.  Not that i'm shirking the workout posts because i'm not doing a ton of workouts this month ...  Oh, no!...  Well, maybe just a little bit.

Anyway, this summer i found a pressure canner at a garage sale, and i have been having fun!  I love the aura of my grandma that surrounds the idea of canning, the memories of the peaches and pears my mom canned and doled out like candy to us in the harsh Alberta winters...

But i haven't been canning fruit.  I have bought, so far, three 20 lb boxes of peaches, but with eight children, that box is eaten up in two days.  So, unless i go buy the peaches after the children are in bed, and then start canning through the night, there will be.... shall we say, loss?  I haven't given up on canning peaches, but the season is almost gone - snow is reportedly going to fly this week, probably not to stay, but definitely to call to fall, and i don't know for sure that i will be able to get another box of ripe but not too ripe peaches!

Anyway, three useful tools i've found recently that are helping me to be more disciplined and *satisfied* as a paleo eater are three things i had in my house already.

One, is my pressure canner - the novelty hasn't worn off, and i've made borscht, pumpkin puree, and roasted tomatoes.  I carefully follow the directions, and i've found good recipes online.  Except for the borscht!  I love borscht, and i use Mollie Katzen's Moosewood cookbook recipe.

The second is my dehydrator.  Dehydrated tomato chips are delish - so sweet and tangy!  And kale chips cooked in the dehydrator stay bright green and keep a little of the kale flavour as opposed to oven baked.  If things ever needed storage (i.e. didn't get eaten up straight out of the dehydrator or as soon as they come out), ziplock bags or empty clear containers can wait in the pantry until we're ready to use them.

And the third is this simple trick - use your fridge and freezer!

What i'm doing with good meals is to make sure i put the leftovers in the freezer as soon as the meal is done.  That way, i have individual sized (or a lunch size shared with children) meal that i can just heat up, and it's delicious and homemade, and guilt free.

For lunch, we had leftover pumpkin shrimp coconut curry.  It was just as good as the first time!  I made some fries for the kids on the side, and felt so virtuous.

From the leftover turkey we had the other day, Coach T made turkey soup from homemade stock for Sunday dinner, and i put the leftovers in the fridge in quart jars.  We'll for sure eat that up in the next day.

Tonight, i made stew - instead of flour to thicken it, i took a few scoops of the stew itself out, and put it through the vitamix.  It was a really nice stew consistency, very meaty flavoured, and gobbled up.  I made a whole bunch, so i would have some leftover to freeze - and it's in the freezer.  There's not enough for all of the children and for me but one day maybe next week, i'll let them have noodles or something carby, and i'll eat leftover stew that tastes just as good as it did tonight.  Or, once we have enough healthy leftovers, we'll have a little lunch buffet.

With the chickens we had the other day (we have to make two chickens generally to feed our family), i took the bones and made stock, then froze it in water jugs (i bought half a dozen nice sturdy ones from a restaurant that went out of business) in my big freezer.  Once i have big family sized portions all frozen, i can transfer to ziplock bags, and pop them back into the freezer till i'm ready for soup.

This is how fast food should be!  It's easy because i took a few minutes on another day to put things into storage properly.  I found that when i just shove a container of leftovers into the fridge, that we weren't eating it always in a timely manner, and a lot got thrown out.  This method is making sure that everything gets eaten, *and* appreciated!

Even the canned food doesn't seem to last long - i think i am down to one more quart jar of pumpkin puree, and i will probably put up a few more batches of that, since it's been nice to have fresh pumpkin pie for the littles, and curry for all of us - but the canning or freezing just buys me the luxury of time!  Time to get back into the mood for curry, or stew, or roasted tomato sauce :)

Next post : recipes!  I'm not the queen of paleo eats, but these are hearty, kitchen tested, and not too hard to make :)

Fuel : Burrito-ful salad

I don't have a picture for this one, but you can check out Mucho Burrito's website for an idea of where i'm going with this.

Scroll down to the salad bowl.

Now, imagine no bowl!

This is something we had this week, and then we made our own :)

Coach T did a wonderful pork roast, and then shredded it in the crockpot.    With greek dressing, tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce,  and tzatziki on the side (should have added feta cheese, too!), it makes a hugely satisfying, very paleo feast!

AND the children love the kind of meals where they get to choose what ingredients they eat and in what proportion.

I noticed three plates where everything was carefully sectioned off :)

Fuel : Proteiny, savoury eggs in a muffin tin!

Like most things in life, the inevitable craving for carbs can fixed with the judicious application of bacon!

Coach T loves these little "muffins", which are super easy to bake and are super tasty!

We tweaked this recipe from allrecipes.com, so it's always a little different...

Bacon and Eggs in a Muffin Tin

Preheat oven to 350.
Bake bacon on a cookie sheet (this reduces the mess!) till well done but not completely crispy. 

But a little knuckle of butter inside each muffin cup.
Curl a bacon slice around the inside of the muffin cup, and break some up to make a "bottom", too.

Sprinkle a little cheddar in each muffin cup, then break an egg into each one.  Top with jalapeno bits and a little more cheddar, and any leftover bacon crumbs.

(Coach T likes to switch up what cheeses he uses, or add in onion instead of jalapeno, or red peppers, too)

Bake in preheated oven for ten to fifteen minutes.

Delicious!!!  I have frozen these so he can grab them for a quick breakfast (when he isn't doing the intermittent fasting, which i guess will be another post one of these days...) :)  But in general, they go way too quick to save.

Fuel : Simple, Clean Suppers

I feel a little guilty blogging about meals i didn't make (except for the chicken!).  Coach T loves cooking and is a lot less utilitarian than I am.  Still, he makes meat, a veggie, and that is it.  No breads on the side, no carbs, but still... tasty!

One simple thing we do with a lot of our veggies is roasting a la Jamie Oliver.  (Click the link for the recipe!) In one of his shows, he had a huge pan of cut up veggies and poured on a "big glug" of olive oil, tossed it all up with his hands, shook generous coarse salt and pepper on it, and threw it in the roaster with his meat.  It looked beautiful, and when we tried it out, it *tasted* wonderful, too!

So, we tend to roast veggies a lot.  Some, like the sweet potatos in the top photo surprise us with how delicious they are later on, cold.  We left the skins on, and they were delicious cold as boats in our bedtime snack.

The pork ( top photo) is just marinated and cooked in a chimichurri sauce, and the chicken (second photo) was "fancy" - Coach T asked me to mix seasoning salt with butter and lift the skin all over the chicken and stuff in the seasoned butter.  Usually i just use a lot of seasoning salt and make sure to baste but the added butter did make the meat extra tasty!  They end up tasting just like the rotisserie chickens you buy at the supermarket!

The tomato and mozzarella salad is his summer favourite, and I love it too!

Here is the recipe:

Coach T's Summer Tomato and Mozzarella Salad

6-8 ripe tomatoes, cut into 1" cubes
2-3 cups mozzarella, cut into 1" cubes
2 tsp basil
1/2 c. olive oil
1/2 c. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste


optional add ins: pine nuts, and feta :)

Fuel : Affordable Fuel for a Big Family

I've talked to a few other moms (of bigger families) who've been to the blog and wonder how it works, feeding everyone paleo.

First of all, we don't.  We figure we'll go bit by bit, and i'm still baking (!) for the little ones.  (it helps if you think of it as making kid chow :) - not meant for adult consumption)

So, the children still eat homemade whole grain (and sometimes white!) bread, biscuits, potatoes, corn...  But gradually we are converting our pantry and buying habits to include them.  It helps that paleo seems to be "all the good bits" anyway...

Except to our one extreme carboholic child :)

Anyway, one thing that's made a difference in our food budget was an offer from friends.  We don't hunt (yet) but friends are outfitters, and had a moose where the hunter didn't want all the meat.  So she called me out to her place, i brought the children, and we cut that moose up :)

Haven and the incomparable Mrs. Davis

It was seriously a lot of fun, for all the children - where else do you get to see a giant carcass suspended from a hook in the roof, or get to chop up huge sides of meat, or grind your own burger meat, and then wrap and stamp it?

Now, many months later, we are still eating that moose!  And tonight we had probably the best steak we've had in many months...

Costco has great prices and great quality, and we're able to buy sizes commensurate with our family, but a little wild meat thrown in there gives variety, and  is just as delicious as store bought!  Try it!

Fuel : Snack time

If you've tried to  lose weight before, the idea of a bedtime snack may not seem like a good idea.  But if you've been in the Zone, you'll know where we're coming from.  Three meals, two snacks, all balanced carbs/protein/good fat.

This is what Coach T made me for my bedtime snack.  Mmmm....

Being paleo doesn't mean following all the Zone rules, but we do find they mesh pretty well, and following the Zone may be better if you are the type of person who likes to count calories, or measure portions, or who is apt to cheat :)  just a tiny little bit!

Right now, we're loosely following Zone/Paleo/ketogenic diet rules - low carbs (and good carbs over refined, no white sugar/flour), adequate protein, and high(er) fat.  It's so delicious!  And, i lost another pound this week :)....

Fuel : Paleo Pizza

I smelled dinner cooking and it smelled like.... Pizza Hut!

What on earth?  So delicious... so forbidden...

But when T called us upstairs to eat, there was something decidedly unpizzalike on the table.

The bacon definitely made up for the lack of crust - it was crunchy, and salty and delicious.  The chicken was seasoned using a bottled cilantro/lime marinade (we also love Tyler Florence's Ultimate chimichurri sauce if you prefer making from scratch).

And over all, melted cheese.  Everyone ate it and loved it :)

Coach T's Paleo Pizza

Cut up ten chicken breasts into bite sized pieces.  Throw them into a casserole dish (9X13 pyrex baking dish, ungreased).  Slather them in chimichurri sauce, or italian salad dressing, or whatever marinade you like.

Bake until almost cooked through.  Cut up half a pack of bacon.  Shake over top the chicken.  Cook again till bacon is crispy.  Drain liquid.  Cover in shredded feta and grated cheddar.  Bake until cheese is bubbly and golden.

Even the littles ones loved it!

Fuel: The Simpler the Better

Because i'm feeding ten people most of the time, I'm usually making huge amounts of food.  I love making a big roast, or ham, or a few chickens at a time, and having leftover meat - it's always good to have an emergency protein ready to go.

I have a little crate of hardboiled eggs in the fridge right now, cheese, and no leftover meat!

Even though we made a huge ham, it went fast.

So, here is a fast and easy dinner.  Just meat, and watermelon.  Easy, "allowed", and simple.  You don't need a ton of starchy sides!  Try it!

Fuel: Son of Grok!

We first came across this recipe at Mark's Daily Apple - another paleo eater called son of Grok invented this, and it's surprisingly satisfying.

We DO eat meat other than ground beef!  And we'll get there soon.  This is just what Coach T wanted to make today, and i'm willing, as usual...

Son of Grok

mmmm.....  primal!

Brown 2 lbs meat (we used ground moose, but whatever kind of ground meat you have will work)

Season with chili powder, seasoning salt, onion powder, whatever you like to make it mexican - if he had taco seasoning, he would have used that.

Serve!

OKAY, It's a little fancier than that.  Serve, with green salsa, sour cream, and homemade guacamole on the side.  Delicious!

We had burritos for the children, but most of them chose to have Son of Grok with us instead...  yay!

Homemade guacamole

based loosely on the Moosewood Cookbook by Molly Katzen

We also eat meals other than dinner... more on that coming up :)

Fuel: Greek Meatballs!

I'm going to try to alternate food and exercise posts - hopefully something is helpful, and if not, at least it pleases my OCD mind to have some sort of balance here!

Tonight's dinner was a winner, at least with me and Coach T.  The littles were a little indifferent - i think because of the olives.  Next time, maybe i'll make a batch of plainies for them..

I used ground pork because it's delish :) but you can use lamb, beef, deer, moose, whatever you have on hand (can you tell we are Canadian?)

This recipe makes enough to feed a family of ten - so, half it if you are a normal sized family or scale down to suit your household...

Paleo Greek Meatballs

2 lbs ground pork

1 c. flaked feta cheese

4 eggs

4 tsp dried parsley (i didn't have any fresh)

3 tsp dried onion (again, no fresh)

1/2 c. olives, cut up into little bits

3 tsp greek salad dressing

Turn the broiler on in your oven.  Mush all ingredients in a big bowl till well mixed.  Using olive oil, grease a few baking dishes - cookie sheet, cake pan, pyrex baking dish (i used all three!) and form the mix into balls, placing on the pan.  Broil on one side until bubbly and just browning.  Flip and brown the other side, and then move each batch to a cookie sheet at the bottom of the oven.  Once all meatballs are cooked, move cookie sheet up to the top rack of the oven to get nicely golden and sizzling with melted feta.

Serve with greek yogurt tzatziki (we just discovered a new favourite from Costco!)

and a side salad.

This side salad is just a small head of romaine, chopped up small, 1/3 of an English cucumber, 1/2 a tomato, chopped up small, a few handfuls of feta cheese, and greek salad dressing.  You can adjust proportions and ingredients according to what you like - i would have added olives if i'd had any more pitted olives!

           As a mom, this way of eating sometimes seems more expensive - after all, where's the filler?  It's just meat and veggies (and a dip!) - but what i've found is that while the ingredients can be more expensive, you don't need to eat a ton to feel full (because there is plenty of fat to satisfy, and plenty of protein to give you energy).  The carbs from vegetables give energy without a sugar high and collapse later on, and although it seems strange to have a meal on purpose without a starch on the side (!), you really don't miss it at all.  Now, if i have guests, i might still serve a starchy side, just because some smaller guests may be picky and only want carbs (my sixteen year old!), but as a family we don't miss the rolls, rice, noodles etc... and i tend not to even have a lot of those carbs in the house, as the littles will want them and they're pretty tempting when we're running low on time.  Fresh veggies or fruit is just as quick as grabbing a bun or toast, and better for you in so many ways!

Day Two...

I'm fighting something off - headachy and feeling weak... But i felt like this before we started, so i'm not blaming the paleo diet... it's just making me glad i have a husband who can and will cook! Hooray for the weekend!

So this is what we did today - meal by meal :) - we'll see how far we can push this...

Breakfast:

omelette with leek, and a little ham. No cheese - so it didn't hold all the ingredients in, but mmmmm it was delicious anyway!

and tea - brown rice gen mai... i'm not sure if it's paleo :) but i'm assuming it is - and i sweetened it with stevia - again, not sure of it's paleo-ness, but it's an herb...

Lunch:

Beef curry - left over roast beef with ground almonds, indian spices, olive oil, garlic. The little ones had Mr. Noodles :) but that's all we ate and it was delicious...

Dinner:

Beef heart - we'd never bought it before, or prepared it before, but to our surprise, all the children ate it up and asked for more. T just sauteed it in olive oil with seasoning salt. For sides, he had canned corn for the littles (not paleo) - and a big bowl of delicious cherry tomatos, plus beets he had sauteed with a little garlic salt and left in the warm oven to rest, and carrots he had boiled, and then left to absorb some butter in a pot...

I'm feeling really nice eating this way - but i am a little worried about this week - cooking for eight or nine three times a day, AND keeping it all paleo? Not sure how it will work out... I do miss the little amount of white bread i was "allowed" on the Zone (as "unfavourable carbs") - and i miss dairy... Especially cheese and sour cream! But T says we will have one cheat day a week, and i'll just have to make it a dilly :) - Perogies with sour cream and bacon and Hagen-Dasz for dinner? We'll see!

Meanwhile, i'm off to prep school work for the week and make a menu for tomorrow. I usually like to have weekly menu, but i think just going one day at a time until we get the hang of this way of eating will be less overwhelming...

T has a coworker with celiac disease - and he has to eat this way all the time - it makes me realize how simple food can be, and at the same time, what a huge amount of "convenience" food is eliminated this way, as well... What we are eating is healthy, but it does take time to prepare, more so than our "quick meal" days where T picks up frozen pizza :) or i bake three loaves of bread for lunch (french boules) and give it to the children along with fruit and cheese and a lot of butter...

Quick paleo lunches? Maybe i will stick to paleo for me and eat eggs for lunch, too... We'll see...