I'm embarking on a Paleo journey and I'm posting all of my thoughts and ideas to this blog. I'll have recipes, links, articles, and just general thoughts about the whole paleo lifestyle.
I'm clearing out the fridge. Inspired by Primal Chat's recent twitter questions asking for ideas on how to save money, I'm trying to not throw any food away. Everyone always says organic produce is too expensive or that Paleo foods are too expensive (check the links to see otherwise), but if you don't eat what you buy, you're literally throwing money away. Part of saving money is simply not wasting it.
That's where fridge clearing dishes come in. What do you do when all you have left is 1/4 head of cabbage, 3 eggs, an onion, and a couple strips of bacon? You make Okonomiyaki! This is one of those it looks weird, but I promise it tastes good dishes, so trust me on this one.
You're probably sick of hearing about it, but my fiance and I discovered a ton of really cool food while traveling around Asia and some of it fits perfectly into a Paleo way of eating. Okonomiyaki is one of those dishes. It's kind of like a veggie heavy omelet, but a little more savory.
Here is what you need: 1 small yellow onion ($0.25), 1/4 head of cabbage($0.50), 5 green onions ($0.50), 4-5 strips of bacon ($1.60)and 3 eggs ($1.00). That's $3.85 for 1 XL or 2 medium sized servings
Next, take your 1/4 head of cabbage and take out the core by slicing into the cabbage at an angle. Chop it up into strips and cut 3 of the green onions into small pieces.
In a mixing bowl, beat 3 eggs and add just a little water (like 1/2 a second under a faucet). Toss the cabbage, green onions, and eggs together, trying to get at least a little egg on every piece of cabbage.
By now, the bacon should be about half done. You don't want it to be all the way cooked yet because the pan is staying on the stove for quite a while longer. Add the cabbage mix on top of the bacon and onions. Don't mix it together, just let it sit on top. The egg will drip through and make a bacon-onion crust on the bottom.
It may take almost 8-10 minutes on each side, so be patient. The egg in the center should steam while the bottom crust is forming. When you're finished, garnish it with some green onions. I had some olive oil mayo and spicy Thai sauce (no sugar!) that I mixed together to make a tangy sauce for dipping. Traditional okonomiyaki is topped with bonito flakes. Bonito flakes are smoked fish shavings that smell like a barn and are really delicious. The coolest thing is that when they are over steam, the shavings move like they're alive. It's a really cool ingredient worth checking out if you have time and access to an Asian market. Ok, enough geeking out on food. Check out the video under this picture to see our last okonomiyaki in South Korea!
I'm trying my first French meal today. Today's meal is a little more time consuming, making it perfect for a Sunday night dinner. You'll have to set aside a couple of hours if you want to make this taste right, but only about 30 minutes are actually spent cooking. The rest of the time is just waiting.
Starting at the big yellow squash and going clockwise: spaghetti squash (2.04), salt, ground pepper, Red Wine (I used Trader Joe's 2 buck Chuck @ $2.99), Worcestershire sauce (0.05), Thyme (0.05), Parsnip (0.49), carrot (0.10), yellow onion (0.80), beef bouillon cube (0.10), 2 lbs of boneless pot roast (6.70), 5 strips of bacon (1.85), and 4 cloves of garlic (0.08) - The total cost of this meal is 15.25 and you can get 4 servings for a total of 3.81 per serving.
Disclaimer: Worcestershire sauce is not paleo. It contains soy and HFCS. 2 tbs are used in the marinade, but I cannot find a way to get that flavor without using the sauce. 2 tbs contain 2 grams of sugar, which I think is fairly minimal. Wheat free soy sauce may come close, but I have not tried it yet. The carrots and parsnips are another point of contention among paleos. I find the occasional carrot to be ok despite its sugar content.
Begin by making the marinade: 3/4 of a cup of wine, a pinch of salt, 2 tbs of Worcestershire sauce, and some ground pepper. Cut the meat into 2 inch cubes and mix it into the marinade. Cover it and leave it for at least 30 minutes, but an hour or more is better.
Begin frying up your bacon! Bacon excites me. Cut the bacon into smaller pieces before frying it. It will be used as a topping when the dish is complete.
Lay your marinated meat on a paper towel and lightly pat it down. You need to remove the excess moisture so that the bacon grease doesn't explode all over your arm. Now take your meat and place it in the pan. I use the center portion of the pan so I can get a really quick sear and lock in the flavors of the marinade. Get a good sear on at least 2 sides.
Eventually it will look like the picture above. It will take a few minutes, though, so while you're waiting, get the spaghetti squash ready by cutting it in half length ways and preheating the oven to 375.
Once they're clean, rub on some olive oil over the entire surface. Add salt and pepper to your taste, but you probably won't need much salt. The dish you're serving this with will be fairly salty on its own.
Cover the pan with foil. The meat is still a little tough, so letting it simmer for a while will help tenderize the meat. If you have the means to buy ribeye, you don't need to worry about the texture of the meat as much. I've been trying to keep paleo affordable, so I went with the cheaper cut of meat and the free ingredients time and patience.
Wait for about an hour. The spaghetti squash and beef will take about this much time until they're ready. We watched a couple episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm and had some seltzer water with lime.
Remove the foil from the beef. At this point, you just need to check the beef for tenderness and the sauce for your preference of thickness. I was still stuffed from lunch, so I decided to wait so I could get the sauce to a near gravy-like thickness
Serve it on top of the spaghetti squash so the squash can soak up the tasty juices. Sprinkle some of the bacon around, and here is what you'll end up with! (I cheated and dusted 1 tsp of parmesan on mine)
My fiance and I were fortunate enough to get to travel all around the world teaching English for a year. One of the countries we went to was Thailand and while there, I fell in love with a soup called "tom yung goong."
It's a hearty coconut based curry soup. Don't leave yet! I don't usually care for coconut. I don't like pina coladas and I hate Mounds, but I love this soup. After a few weeks on a paleo plan, I realized that this soup was completely paleo from beginning to end, so I taught myself how to make it. This is a more involved recipe and takes a little time, making it a perfect weekend project.
Let's start at 6:00: Cocounut milk (1.09), 1 chicken bouillon cube (0.10), 1 lb of chicken breast (2.99), 10 sprigs of cilantro (0.10), 3 limes, 1 yellow onion (0.60), 1/8 cup of tumeric (0.05), 2 tbs fish sauce (0.10), 1 tbs sesame oil (0.05), lemon grass (0.99), 1/2 a package of button mushrooms(1.15), cauliflower (1.39), and 2 jalapenos (0.17). not pictured: 1 tbs of coconut oil (0.15)
That's a total of 8.93 and I got 4 servings from this batch, so that's a total of about 2.23 per bowl.
This recipe seems really complicated, but it's really just a matter of getting everything in the picture above mixed in a pot and letting it boil for about an hour, so don't be intimidated!
The first thing you'll need to do is chop up the onions. Start simmering those with 1 tbs of coconut oil in a large pot.
While those sweat, deseed one jalapeno and half of the other. Leave the seeds in half of a jalapeno for some heat. If you don't like spicy food, get rid of all the seeds. Chop those and add them to the pot. Next, chop and add the mushrooms. Finally, throw a tbs of sesame oil on all of that and stir it up. As these release their water, they'll create a little stock for our soup.
Next, roughly chop up the cauliflower and add that to the pot. Mix up your pot to make sure there is a little oil on most of the veggies so they don't burn. Make sure the heat is on low.
Next, we need to get some flavor from the lemon grass. If you can find fresh lemon grass, just cut it, bruise it (crush it), and add it to the pot. It isn't edible, so make sure you pull it out before serving. If, like me, you have a hard time finding fresh lemon grass, you'll need to buy it dried. I like to boil it in water for a couple minutes to release the flavor. I use an emptied tea bag so I don't have to look for 100 pieces of dried lemon grass in the soup. I used the same pan as the chicken, hence the chicken bits in the water.
Once the water turns yellow, dump all of it into your pot.
Now, stir in a can of cocounut milk and 2 tbs of fish sauce (yes I know it stinks, but it adds necessary flavor). Next, add 1/8 of a cup of tumeric in small amounts, stirring it in as you go so it doesn't clump up. Tumeric will stain anything it touches, so be careful. If you aren't careful, you'll look like you washed your hands with French's mustard.
It will be about an hour before it's ready. It needs to boil on low heat until the cauliflower is tender. While this batch was boiling, I found a tomato that was about to go bad, so I added that to the mix. I like to make soups towards the end of the week to help use up ingredients that may go bad.
It's been an hour. Here is what your finished product will look like.
**When serving, stir in the juice of half of a lime and some fresh cilantro. This last step is the most important as it makes the soup taste fresh and cuts through all of that coconut fat.
This recipe is also made with seafood, so feel free to experiment and get back to me with the results!
