Grilled Lamb & Mediterranean Salad

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

As I said in my last recipe, I'm really trying to cut back on the dairy. I feel I've been a little to lax, starting to venture more towards Atkins territory than a paleo or primal way of eating. So this recipe is an attempt to get back to basics.

Let's start with the Mediterranean salad. You'll get better flavor if you let it marinate for a while, so I made mine a couple hours beforehand.

You'll need 20 grape tomatoes, 1 handful of chopped parsley 1/4 of a red onion, 2 cloves of grated garlic, 4 oz of sliced black olives, 1 cucumber, 1 tbs of lemon juice, 2 tbs of olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Basically, you just chop everything up and mix it in a bowl. Add the salt and pepper to your taste. It took about 5 minutes to make.

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

For the grilled lamb, take 1 lb of ground lamb and combine it with a handful of parsley and 3 grated garlic cloves.

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

A quick tip - When working with the chopped parsley, put it in the bottom of your mixing bowl and place the lamb on top. Chopped parsley has a way of getting everywhere, making a huge mess. It looks like an Italian Rip Taylor came through your kitchen. (Wait for the 20 second mark)



Mix up all the ingredients really well. If you leave big clumps of garlic, it might burn and get really bitter. If it's spread out evenly, the fat from the lamb will help infuse the meat with the garlic flavor. I like a good crust on my lamb, so I decided to make little lamb "balls" so I could get the most surface area possible, ensuring as much crust as possible.

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

Grill them until you're happy with how they look and plate everything up! You should be able to get about 3 or 4 servings with this recipe, depending on your appetite.

From Lamb balls and Mediterranean salad

Beef Bourguignon with Spaghetti Squash

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

Here are the ingredients:

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

From Beef Bourguignon

While the meat marinates, we can get started on some prep work for the rest of the meal. Chop up the onions, parsnip, carrot, and garlic.

From Beef Bourguignon

Begin boiling 2 cups of water and add the bouillon. If you have beef stock, you can skip this step.

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

Once the bacon is really crispy, pull the bacon out with tongs and leave the bacon grease in the pan on a medium-high heat.

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

Scoop out the seeds and slimy middle portion.

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

Place the spaghetti squash face down so it can steam itself in the oven.

From Beef Bourguignon

By now, the meat should be about ready to pull out. Use the remaining juice in the pan to fry up your veggies. Add everything but the garlic.

From Beef Bourguignon

Once the veggies are a little brown, add the marinade from the beef, another 3/4 cup of red wine, 1 tsp of dried thyme, and the garlic.

From Beef Bourguignon

Once that is thoroughly mixed, add the beef.

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

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.

From Beef Bourguignon

After about 50 minutes to an hour, the squash will look wrinkled, indicating it is finished.

From Beef Bourguignon

You can now see the strands of "spaghetti" beginning to seperate. Scrape the squash perpendicular to the "spaghetti" to remove the strands.

From Beef Bourguignon

From Beef Bourguignon

From Beef Bourguignon

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

From Beef Bourguignon

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)

From Beef Bourguignon

In the future, I will probably add in mushrooms since I love to add mushrooms to everything. If you try this, please let me know what you think.

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Thai Soup: Tom Yung Goong

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."

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

Here is what I used:

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

Mix 1 cup of hot water with the chicken bouillon and add that to the pot.

From Tom Yung Goon

(You probably didn't need a picture of that....oh well)

As that comes to a boil, fry up your chicken breast and set it aside to rest.

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

Finally, zest the 3 limes into the soup and mix in the cilantro.

From Tom Yung Goon

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.

From Tom Yung Goon

**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!

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McHunting and McGathering

My last post was about cheating. I made my case for cheating and how cheating can even be used as a tool to keep you on track. Let's look at another side of the issue. What should you do when you don't want to cheat, but you're away from home and food choices are looking pretty bad?

While nothing is as good as controlling the food going into your mouth by cooking for yourself, here are some tips for staying paleo while on the move. I'll try and rank these based on general paleo guidelines. My scores are completely subjective, based on no real system, completely debatable, and are out of 5.

1) Don't eat. Intermittent fasting 5/5

Pros - It's free, it's easy, and requires no planning

Cons - Fasting can lead to increased cortisol levels and if you're planning on working out later, that can have a negative effect on your goals and hormone levels

2) Chipotle Salad - 4/5

Pros - The beef is of a higher quality (good, but not all grass fed,) than most beef sources, add guacamole to get your omega 3's and 6's in balance

Cons- You have to customize your order without beans, cheese, or sour cream, you end up with beef, guacamole, and pico on a bed of lettuce

3) Jimmy John's Unwich - 3/5

Pros - No processed grains, will deliver

Cons - The sauces can be made with vegetable or soybean oils, cheese is dairy, meats aren't grassfed

4) Find a grocery store 3/5

Pros - Great selection, full control over what you eat

Cons - Your meal will probably be bland (raw veggies and lunch meat), most prepared food at a grocery store is as bad as most fast food and tastes worse

5) Subway salad 3/5

Pros - Good selection of vegetables

Cons - I get pissed off when a foot long sub costs less than my salad that has half of the meat, the quality of the meat is questionable (those aren't what chicken breasts look like), and since you shouldn't have most of the dressings, the meal is a little bland

6) Hardee's Low-carb Thickburger - 2/5

Pros - It's not a Big Mac

Cons - Ketchup, mayo, and cheese all need to be omitted, the quality of the meat is suspect, they're really messy, it takes a couple to feel satisfied

7) Panda Express 2 proteins with stir fried veggies- 1/5

Pros - Variety of proteins

Cons - A lot of proteins are breaded and fried, the quality of the protein is questionable, the sauces usually have a lot of sugar, MSG/salt content, cooking oils are vegetable based

I have only scratched the surface of the possibilities of this topic. This is a post that could really benefit from community involvement. I'd love to hear what paleo options you've found away from home. In fact, I'd like to get a permanent list of options going on the site. I'm sure there are plenty of other salad options out there, but have you found any more creative approaches to staying paleo on the go? Please comment or throw out an idea on Twitter! Use the hash tag #paleo2go.

Bacon Shrinkage, a Worldwide Epidemic

Do you ever wonder why when you get bacon in restaurants, it looks like this...

...and your bacon at home looks more shriveled than George Costanza getting out of the pool?

While some restaurants put a heavy piece of metal on their bacon to keep it straight, others use a tool that you have at home: the oven.

1)Preheat your oven to 400 degrees while laying bacon out on a cooking sheet with parchment paper. I use parchment paper so I don't have to clean up the sheet - yes I'm that lazy.

2)Add as much pepper as you can handle to the bacon

From 2010-04-05

3) Bake for about 15 minutes (everyone has a different oven and cooking times can vary quite a bit)

From 2010-04-05

4)Throw the bacon on a paper towel to help it retain its crispiness

From 2010-04-05

5)Stop looking at it and eat it already!

This method takes more time, but if you have the patience, you'll never cook bacon any other way again!