Pork and Baby Bok Choy Red Basil Curry

Me, my buddy Clinton, and his sister, Shannon went out to Thai last night, and I had everything I needed to make some bomb Thai food again tonight, so here it is.

Pork and Baby Bok Choy Red Basil Curry

Boil 3 russet potatoes, cut into 1/16ths, with 6 carrots cut into 1/4"+ rounds, for 15+ minutes. In a ton of olive oil, saute 6 minced cloves of garlic, a pinch of red pepper, black pepper, and 1.5p of thinly sliced pork loin. Flip after 5 minutes, and only turn once. Cook for ten minutes. Remove and cut into strips.

In same pan as pork was cooked in, cook an onion, and add 1/2t ginger, lemongrass, cinammon, black pepper, 1T dried basil, 1t granulated garlic, + salt TT. Add only the thickest part of 6 bok choy heads. Add red curry, .25c fish sauce, 2.5c water, .5t celery salt, stir and simmer. Add drained and dried potatoes and carrots. Combine. Add tops of bok choy and wilt. Add can of coconut milk and simmer 5+ minutes.

100th Paleo Post

I made this a week ago and can hardly remember what goes into it, but here is my best guess:

Black Buck with Asparagus and Zucchini

Take 1.5p of ground black buck meat and saute with onions and garlic in olive oil (there is virtually no fat in this meat, so you need to start sauteing the onions and garlic in olive oil before you add the meat) Add 3-4 cut up zucchini, saute for a little, and then add 1.5 bunches of asparagus. Once cooked, cover in left over Arrabiatta sauce. Simmer and Serve.

Addendum: I don't personally know where this meat came from, it is part of what I thought was a bag of venison, but it was labeled "Black Buck". According to the Internet, Black Buck is an antelope species from Africa, so good luck recreating this gem.

Best Ham Ever

This ham was awesome, too bad it was completely dominated by The One Dish.

Super simple: take 10p unglazed, un-spiral cut ham, cover in huges amounts of black pepper, granulated garlic, paprika, and cayenne pepper. Sprinkle lightly with salt (Ham is pretty salty so go easy on it. Nothing ruins ham like too much salt). Rotisserie for two hours (I just used a noun as an action item, fuck you verbs!)

One Dish to Rule Them All

Precious

I was moved up a few weeks in the old "Bring a bag full of shitty bagels and cakes to work Friday" earlier this week as a sort of "End of the year, its all on you and your alleged awesome food, so don't fuck up the most relaxed time you will have all year with some crappy Cheese Biscuits & Syrup breakfast."

I had a ham in my fridge, so I agreed to take up the challenge now and not pass the buck until the 8th of January. It may have been the best professional decision I have ever made: this dish made waves in the Sloan space/time continuum. I truly have never seen such a reaction to anything I have ever done. I had wealthy, world-travelling people in their late 60s telling me it was the best dish they had ever had. And they are supposedly extremely picky people.

This is an "Almost Paleo" only because it has dairy (albeit an absolute ton of it).

The One Dish

This is an egg casserole, not a quiche or frittata. The process is a three stage progression of prep-and-cool, combine-and-chill, and then heat-and eat.

Prep-and-Cool
Each item here takes its own special method of preparation because you want the flavors to not combine before baking into the eggs.

Chorizo Spiced Bacon
My recipe calls for two pounds of this, so I had to make them in two stages of one pound at a time. Take bacon and cut into 1" squares, cook slowly adding chorizo seasoning (I just got it from a Tienda Mexicana, but you can make you own) and freshly ground black pepper. Once crisp, drain off fat on paper towels and let cool to room temperature.

Wilted Spinach
Boil about 2-3q of water. Take two heads of spinach and cut off stems and rinse very thoroughly of all dirt. Once the water is boiling, remove from heat and place spinach in water and cover with lid for two minutes exactly. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop cooking. Let cool to room temperature and chop coarsely and reserve.

Sauteed Baby Bellas
Take about 20 oz of baby bella mushrooms and quarter them, this will leave you with big enough, obvious enough, pieces for those insane co-workers to pick out should they choose. Anyway, saute in olive oil until tender, drain and cool.

Combine and Chill
Make sure you get a huge bowl for this, these quantities are huge. Take 24 eggs and beat until very well combined. I have actually been considering posting on how important beating eggs truly is, I see what is happening out there in Omletland and it makes me sad that people don't take the time to beat the shit out of their eggs. Anyway, beat the shit out of them. Then add 4 cups of full fat milk. Mix.

Add a combination of 2 cups of almond meal and 4t baking powder slowly to the eggs (not ridiculously slow though, they combine pretty easily). Take 2 pounds of Monterrey Jack and 1 pound of mild cheddar and chop into pieces as close to shredded size as possible (I don't have a cheese grater, but this is probably what I would do even if I had one). Mix slowly into eggs. Add 24 oz of full fat cottage cheese, combine.

Now, take one bunch of leeks and slice in half, and then very very finely slice the white parts. I used my Farmer Fresh leeks and they were smaller than what you get at GloboStores (aka super markets), there were three in my bunch, but 2 standard ones would be equivalent. Add to mix. Very finely slice five Thai chilies and combine. Add mushrooms, combine, spinach, combine, and then finally, the bacon, in that order. Season with three huge pinches of salt and lots of black pepper.

Butter some pans (I needed three, a 13x9, a 12x12, and a 7x5) and fill with mixture. Chill in fridge for 3+ hours/ over night.

Heat and Eat
Bring to room temperature. Cover in paprika. Bake on 350F, uncovered, until done. I did mine all at the same time, I was expecting it to take 45m-1h, but it ended up taking 1.5h with the little dish finishing first.

Drive it to work and sit back and wait for a promotion. But seriously, I was so far behind with the additional cooking time needed that I couldn't even finish this dish.

The Return of the One Dish
Had I more time, once the dish had "set" I would have topped the casserole with slices of goat's cheese, and blistered grape tomatoes and then broiled it briefly.

It took me more than 1.25h to just think about how to do this dish, and yes mom, this was inspired by that silly casserole we make on Christmas with the Del Norte canned chilies.

Venison Sausage and Peppers

This is an all time favorite for me, right away. One bite of this and holy shit, I was hooked. This is obviously inspired by the classic Italian dish normally served with pasta. I just didn't put any pasta with this!

Step 1: Make arrabiata sauce: tons of olive oil, coat the bottom of a sauce pan with it. Tons of minced garlic, ten cloves at least, and a huge pinch of crushed red peppers, salt and pepper. A can of tomato sauce and a can of diced tomatoes, a little simmering ... and tada! Easiest, best Italian style sauce ever.

Look at all that oil (the dark red)

Step 2: Get your peppers going. Unlike most sausage and pepper dishes (made with super fatty cow or pork sausage) you have to cook your shit seperatly. Normally, you would cook your sausages so that the fat would collect in the pan and then you could use that to cook your onions and peppers. Not so fast with deer sausage though. There is no useful cooking fat in these sausages so you have to cook you onions and peppers in olive oil seperately. Slice 2 brown onions and four bell peppers into strips (the ratio of 1:2 is critial for fajitas as well), and saute in olive oil with 3 cloves of minced garlic, and a thinly sliced jalapeno pepper (with seeds).

Meanwhile, cook 6 links of venison sausage in another pan 5-7 minutes per side.

Once onions and peppers are limp and partially carmelized, slice and combone the sausage. Mix and simmer breifly. Place on plate and cover in Step 1 sauce.

Almost heaven

Step 3: Crush.

Mama mia

Veggies with Bison

So, since I found some bison, I figured I should cook it and eat it. Plus, since I need to eat more veggies, well, here you go:

Take bison and saute with garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Saute until done talking on the phone. Add spinach (I've done this with red cabbage + ground ginger as well). Eat until you realize your roomate wants some too. Add supplemental asparagus, cook until tender, eat again.

Post WOD Fuel

So, in conjunction with my plan to lift more heavy things in an attempt to get stronger, people have been telling me to dial in my post work out food. I don't really know what I am doing with this, but the basics go like this in my mind:

• Total carbohydrate intake depends on your level of destruction accrued during the Feet of Strength (FOS), the more the destruction, the more you need.
• Given a level of lean-ness, you will be able to handle more carbs if lean, less if not-so-lean.
• Take your post FOS fuel ASAP
• Make it a "Fast digesting" carb source: sweet potatoes, bananas, milk (according to R. Wolf), and even Gatorade if desperate
• Stick to strick Paleo when ever possible
• Finish with post FOS protien with an hour, hopefully a protien source with parents

I don't know the exact amount I should be taking post FOS, but I'm dialing in around 60-80g. I made about 5 sweet potatoes + 3 persimmons + a little water, with cinammon and cloves, and a little coconut cream. Each serving is 350ish grams, or about 60g+ of carbs.

I'm planning on eating these post FOS.

Gigantic Piece of Beef a la Mitch

At one of the CFV BBQs my homeboy Mitch was pouring coconut milk all over his world famous tri-tips. I had never seen anything like this, nor had I ever considered anything like this, but his tips are great, and more importantly, they are universally loved. This was my first attempt at this chapter in the book of food.

Almost done, covered for the last time with coconut cream

Finished product

Take a gigantic piece of lean beef, coat in pepper, lots of red pepper, and salt. Cook, flipping like Mitch (i.e. when outside is semi-charred, flipping and basting, re-flipping and re-basting as required), until cooked through. On my gas grill (which is a pathetic substitute for an oak log Santa Maria BBQ), I cooked closed lid for 12minutes + Flip/Baste+ 12m +5+5 then open lid for 5+5. I let it rest for ten minutes and then crushed it.

It wasn't as good as Mitch's, but I learned a lot. Next time...

The Paleo Goes Gourmet

First Course: Romaine salad with Farmer Fresh yellow and orange tomatoes, served with my favorite sesame dressing. Paired with cheap champange.


Main Course: New York steak, cooked to order (by the birthday house guest who likes them ruined,... I mean, well done), blanched and sauted Farmer Fresh carrots and green beans, mashed potatoes and onions. Paired with cheap red wine (Charles Shaw!!).

Dessert: Almost Paleo dessert with Breyer's Brand ice cream, both chocolate and vanilla, topped with fresh raspberries and almonds.

Except for the dessert, this was high level paleo service.

Greens: Mustard and Kale

I have been trying to eat more greens, and this was a great showing. Take four strips of thinly sliced bacon and dice. Saute with three minced garlic cloves, ground ginger, salt, pepper, and red pepper. Cook until crispy. Add two heads of cut up greens: a head of kale and a head of mustard greens. Saute until semi wilted, still crunchy through some leaves and for sure crunchy in the stalks.
This worked very well with the beef. It takes some serious work to eat all those greens too.

Grilled Beef Tip

I may have mentioned recently that I kinda suck at cooking steaks. These pieces of beef turned out perfectly and they were all of different thicknesses, cooked on the same grill, and the same time, though flipped and taken off according to one rule: flip and remove at first blood.

To me this means that as soon as you see blood coming out from the top side, you flip the piece over. Then, as soon as you see the blood coming out the previously cooked side, you pull it. Let it rest for a little and then crush. I like my beef super rare, this was medium rare tending towards rare.

The recipe for this was just salt, pepper, sage and crushed red pepper. Delicious.

Cutie Spinach Salad

Another simple gourmet dish: take a bunch of spinach, cover with cutie clementines and some freshly cut onions. Coat with Lemon Dill Vinegrette (previously posted), and then season to taste. A word of advice: use as many clementines as you can, it makes it that much better.

Almond Crusted Snapper

This is super easy: beat an egg. Cover fresh, wild caught, red snapper fillets (how did I find this at Ralph's?) in salt and pepper. Dip into beaten egg and dredge in almond meal until coated. Cook in oiled pan for about 5 minutes per side. It's that simple, and man is it delicious.

Crack

These super ripe persimmons are like crack: you're hooked once you try it. I'm getting them ready to eat at the farmer's market downtown. And, they are cheap.

Meatball Soup

So I took those Bison Meatballs and made a soup. Take diced onions, minced garlic, and saute in oil. Add par-cooked potatoes, leeks and white carrots, and saute. Then, add a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of tomato sauce. Bring to simmer and add meatballs. Simmer for a little while to allow meatballs to absorb sauce. Add enough "Paleo Broth" to cover meatballs and thin soup out.

I didn't even eat this dish fresh! When you need supplemental meals, canning with these huge jars makes it easy: here is a gallon of soup ready for quick lunches or dinners in a pinch.

Bison Meatballs

These are great for viturally anything you want to make: spaghetti, sandwhiches, or while staying Paleo, used in soups and stews (as I used them), or finally you can eat them by themselves.

Mix together a pound of ground bison, 80g almond flour, six cups (fresh) of cut up spinach (wilted and drained), 3/2t ground sage, 1t cayenne pepper, 1t pepper, 1/2t salt. Form into golf ball sized balls (mine made about 21). Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.

These are really good eating too.

Lemon Dill Vinagrette

Here is a simple little dressing:

• 2T Rice Vineager
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1/2t ground ginger
• 1t dried dill
• 2t dried onion
• 1/4c canloa oil
• 1/4c olive oil
• 1t dijon mustard
• Salt and pepper to taste

Mix and enjoy.

Oregano Steak, or Oregon State Meat

This is easy. Heat cast iron (or Civil War era) pan with chili oil in it slowly till added crushed red pepper flakes crackle. Rub down T-bone steak with salt, pepper and green/gold dried oregano. Throw into pan for 5m per side for rare-semi-rare. If you see blood coming out of the cooked side, stop! The cast iron pan cooks this better than anything else I have tried. I'm not really that good at cooking top level steaks for some reason, and that really isn't okay with me. Solution: practice steak.

Practice

As Rx'd looks like this:

Post Rx'd, it was excellent:

Beet Greens and Bacon

Okay, back to posting a little more frequently...

This was really good and really easy. Saute, I can't believe I'm going to write this, three strips of cut up bacon in 1t of chili oil. That's right: cook your bacon in oil. Add a quarter of a diced red onion and saute for a couple minutes until bacon is cooked but not near crisp. Add 160g of cut up green beans and cook for 5-10 m. Add 400g of chopped up beet greens and wilt (this will only take 3 minutes). Season with salt and pepper.

Why all the grams? I bought a scale.

My Farmers Market Run

Last weekend I went to the farmers market determined to get back to eating way more veggies than I have been when trying to eat way more calories (I was eating tons more meat, avocados, and nuts and just couldn't eat all the veggies because I wasn't hungry and had no room left in my stomach). Anyway, I only had $16 cash so that was my budget and my goal was quality first, volume second, and diversity third. This is half the budget of my local delivery box, so I had to circle the market probably 5 times to determine my best course of action and here is what you can get:

• 540g Kale - $1.25
• 866g Romaine lettuce - $1.25
• 726g Green beans - $2.00
• 508g Leeks - $1.50
• 462g Leaf lettuce - $1.25
• 954g Beets (with greens) - $1.25
• 917g Guava - $2.25
• 1,438g Persimmons (super ripe, the 'Crack' fruit) - $4.00
• 779g White carrots - $1.25

This was 16 pounds of food for $16. This was a very good deal, but it took 1.15 hours to figure it out: not a very good use of time (although I like shopping for food). It would be tough to accomplish this value if I hadn't had the experience of living as a super poor person in Italy forced to subside on farmers market's cheapest foods. When I was out there in Milano I would walk the markets looking for the best deals, striving for $0.50 worth of whatever I could use. I could have easily spent $28+ on this food.

With all this being said, here are the reasons why Farmer Fresh to you is a better idea:

• Diversity: I normally get the same amount of veggies, but never two heads of lettuce, plus very similar greens of kale and beets. I bought all similar types of these veggies because the vendor was selling them for such a cheap price. If you lack diversity, you lack options, you can become bored easily and soon to fall off Paleo.
  
• Compliments: FFTY gives you things like herbs, citrus, garlic or ginger, and though those seem like small considerations, they really are not. If your herb is basil the menu options will take you from China to Italy. Cilantro? China to Mexico. Thyme, rosemary, chives, etc.? France to Germany to America North and South. How do you cook kale with no herbs? Its a big deal.
  
• Value: My time isn't worth this effort. Granted, this was a tough challenge and maybe I could have pulled off a FFTY box with practice, or in 30 minutes with $32 bucks but what would that mean? Equal physical monetary exchange, equal volume, diversity, and quality, minus a half hour plus travel time. You can't stack these cards to be equal or greater value than FFTY.
  
• Randomness: gone. There is no randomness here. Though seemingly random, this is truly controlled chaos with the appearance of randomness. Everything is known. Why? I can't make cost/value based decisions with out knowing the value of the thing that I am buying. For example, I could have bought a handful of white sapote, which I only knew what they were because of FFTY, but I had no idea of the value.
  Off the top of your head: how much are 9 golf ball sized white sapote worth (maybe 3/2 pounds)? I had $2.25 with me at the time. They wanted $1.75 per pound. I bought over two pounds of guava for my money because I knew that they would be $6 at Ralph's. That was not a random decision.

There was a lot of shit there, and way more choices than I get offered in my FFTY boxes, but none of them were memorable enough for me to, well..., remember. I do remember seeing persimmons on sale for $3+/p, green beans for $2.5/p, sweet potatoes for $2/p, heirloom toma....

Paleo Sweet Potatoes at Thanksgiving

So here is the dish no one ate. Fine, it was good though, I'm eating the leftovers and they are awesome.

Bake four large-ass sweet potatoes as prescribed previously. Scoop out the inners into a big bowl. Blend smooth with an electric mixer. Add cinnamon, about 1t, and a few ounces of coconut milk. Re-blend. Spread into pan, cover with sprinkles of ground cinnamon and cloves (this is the real key with no sugar: cloves). If I was making this for my house, I would throw down a ton of chili oil or cayenne while adding the coconut milk.

Paleo Green Bean Caserole

This was a good one. Take four pieces of bacon, with garlic and onion and saute in chili oil. Saute until cooked through. Add cut up pieces of green beans (these were French green beans) with a half bunch of cut asparagus. Season to taste. Cook until the green beans are tender. Place in caserole and cover with large wedges of tomatoes. I covered this and put it in the fridge for a couple hours. Bake uncovered for 20 minutes at 350F to reheat.

Reflections on a Skipped Cycle

Lame, I just lost about a three page post on this subject and I don't think I can re-create it. Fuck.

Anyway. The rest did me no good. I'm out with my lame tinkering. I'm going back to fundementals and starting over again. I can't believe I lost that effing post. It took me seriously three hours to write. Fuck the internet.

Grapefruit Chicken

So, I'm begining to think that some of this stuff must seem like it is way out there to some of you, but try to make one of these and you'll see its not really too hard. And, Jordan and I have a ton of grapefruits for some reason.

Peel one grapefruit and mince. Add 3/2T of minced rinds to mortar and pestle. Add 1t salt, 1t ground ginger, 1/2t ground lemongrass, 1t cayenne pepper, and enough olive oil to turn into paste. Add 1/2t sesame oil. Take a whole chicken and cut off excess fat, and detatch skin while leaving it on the bird. Cover bird with tons of pre-ground pepper and then cover with paste inside the skin and out. Rub supplemental grapefruit rind all over bird too. Roastisserie for 85 minutes.

The name says it all for this one: it is truly grapefruit flavored chicken. I thought it was good, not a life changing, come to Jesus moment, but a worthwhile experiment. If I had better side dishes that I could use grapefruit in, this could be some Iron Chef style shit. I'm stuck with what I have in my kitchen: sweet potatoes and asparagus. Maybe I could have tried harder.

Spicy Garlic Asparagus

Saute thin asparagus in chipotle oil with lots of minced garlic, salt, black pepper, red onion slices, and crushed red peppers. Easy enough?

New York Loin Roast

This was an excellent choice, its like buying a 9-inch thick steak, and! I got it for like $32 off becuase its the Holidays! This truly was the perfect time to buy the roastisserie.

Cover, in a very thick coat, the roast in unfreshly ground pepper. Then in a mortar and pestle grind together oregano, salt and crushed red pepper. Once ground smooth, cover roast liberally with it. Roastisserrie for 72 minutes or 16m/p.

Baked Sweet Potato

This one is for Colin. Have I posted this before?

Take sweet potato, clean, and pat dry. Bake for 45 minutes at 450F. Fork open (lengthwise and then squeeze with oven mitts to pop it out) and cover with olive oil, cinnamon, paprika and I like mine with fresh crushed garlic. This is really easy and delicious.

Turkey

TGIF: Thank Celestial Cycles Its AutumnTurkey is cheap, super cheap right now. If you have a Paleo Pantry/Freezer you have room to spare. This bird was $0.33/p. Or $5 total. I have two more in my freezer.

Take less than a 15p turkey, rub/ flavor up with fresh thyme, crushed red pepper, salt, pepper, and cram half of a huge onion inside. Binde tight, or cut off wings and legs, then roastisserrie for 12 min/p. Endulge.

Roastisserrie Chicken V1.0

When I was buying the rotisserie, the woman at the check out called it a roastisserrie. I wanted to talk to her manager...

This recipe was inspired from the lining notes of the roastisserrie package itself.

Lemon Herb Chicken
Peel rind off of lemon, mince finely. In a mortar and pestle, combine lemon rind, 1t dried thyme, 1/2t of ground sage, and dried rosemary. Add 1t crushed red pepper. For the chickens, cut off visible excess fat, and, this is a new technique thingy, pull skin up off breasts while remaining in tact; with a paring knife, cut all the stringy/ membrane things in-between the skin and carcase. Work your hands all the way into the chicken to loosen skin all through out the bird. Kinda graffic, right?

Take your rub, and work it all over the outside of the bird, and then rub in-between the skin and the flesh. Rub in the interior of the bird too. Season with salt and pepper, inside and out. Take remnants of lemon, cut in half, squeeze over birds, and place one half inside of each bird. Roastisserize for about 10-12 minutes per pound.

That lemon rind really makes this a stand out above and beyond typical lemon pepper seasoning (even without MSG).

Salmon Pancetta Soup

Ahh, seafood. This is super simple, fringe paleo (because of the canned products, not the ingredients), delicious start to any amazing seafood soup. I took the flavors from Aldo's on State in Santa Barbara, where they use swordfish and potatoes in their version. There was a time when this was the best soup I had ever had, so I figured out what to do to make it (and now over again to make it Paleo). This is faster to prepare than most dishes I post, and I made it when I thought I was fighting off a cold (one of my co-workers was sick, it was nothing; I must be a hypochondriac) two days ago.

Salmon Pancetta Soup

In a generous portion of olive oil, saute 7 minced garlic cloves. Add 1/4-1/3p of diced pancetta (in America we call this unsmoked, plain old bacon), and a finely diced small onion. Cook until pancetta is done, but not yet crispy. Add three whole, dried, red chilies. Add 1T dried basil. Add 1/2T dried thyme. Season to taste. Add to this a can of salmon, oil and all. Add 15oz cans of petite diced tomatoes and tomato sauce. Add 3 cups of "Paleo Broth" (3c water, 3 bay leaves, 1t celery salt). Simmer until bubbling then serve hot.

Variations: The single biggest variation would be to swap out a cup of broth for white wine. Also, this is good with any white fish (talapia, cod, etc.), halibut, swordfish, and more pungant fish like salmon and cat fish. This takes well to shell fish too, so dont shy away from mussles, shrimp, crab, etc. Vegetables that can be added are potatoes, carrots, celery, larger pieces of onion, zucchini, summer squash, and on and on. This is just about the most basic seafood soup base with unlimited varieties that can be made, so use this as your launching point and be creative. Also, a more traditional approach to this dish does not use pancetta, but rather butter, FYI.

Pumpkin Basil Ham Curry Soup

This is not one for the faint of heart, or the person who has just simply stumbled upon this Paleo blog. This is extremely unique, delicious, and complicated.

You have to already have some Pineapple Clove Ham or equivalent on hand.
You have to already know how to make my Paleo Broth.
You should have an idea of what is going on with curries.
You need a very well stocked Paleo pantry.

Lets start! You have to get two things going simultenaeously: first, begin the Sweet Paleo Braised Pumpkin recipe I just posted. When you start braising the pumpkin, add a large, coarsely cut onion. Second, get a 5qt pan going with:

• 2T Canola oil
• 1t Ginger powder
• 2 Cloves of finely minced garlic
• 1/2t ground Lemongrass
• 1 small very finely minced onion

Saute until the minced onion is translucent, but not carmelized. Add 1/2-1T ground paprika. Saute until a small portion of the onion carmelizes. Add 6 whole, dried red Thai chilies. Add about 1.2 pounds of diced ham: use about half from the skin portion with as much fat removed as possible, and the other half from the leaner leg section. Saute until most of the remaining fat is off of the meat. Add 3/4-1p of diced brown mushrooms. Saute on low until pumpkin in other pan is semi-firm.

Combine two pans into the 5qt pot (do not drain) remove bay leaf and stir. Add 3T of fish sauce. Add 1 can of coconut milk (13-14oz). Stir until combined. Add 2T almond flour and stir till desolved. Add 3-4 cups Paleo Broth. Bring to a boil, then simmer. Simmer till done, up to an hour.

Prior to serving, add bunch of sliced basil leaves to soup, and stir. Season to taste.

I must have eaten 5 bowls of this in a row. This dish has a lot going on in it, very complex flavors. I was super stoked at the "pumpkin" orange color it ended up being too!

Sweet Braised Paleo Pumpkin

I made this to be used straight away in the next post, but this is, in fact its own recipe and can be used as a side dish.

Sweet Braised Paleo Pumpkin

Take a pie pumpkin (a small pumpkin that you would never use for carving, it is what you are supposed to use for pies), remove stem and cut in half. Using your hands, pull out all seeds and retain in a colander to dry over night (I'll show you guys how to use these to make pumpkin seeds soon too). Then, with the two halves, take a spoon and scrape out all of the stringy things. Slice the halves into cresent shapes pieces. Then, cut those into little spoon sized pieces.

Meanwhile, in a shallow pan, bring a stick of cinnamon, 4T of unsweetened apple sauce, 1c of water, a bay leaf, some cracked black pepper, and 1/2t of celery salt to a simmer. Add pumpkin and simmer until soft (this will be a matter of taste, and whether or not you cover the pumpkin. I recommend simmering until the skin is easy to chew through). Season to taste.

You can add onions, garlic, or virtually anything else you think will go with this dish while simmering. With out explicitly trying it, I bet if you added cranberries and some ground clove this would be an awsome Paloe stand alone for your upcoming Paleo Thanksgiving.

Mixed Green Salad w/ Ham and Avocado

This is a "Fun with What We Have Learned" meal. Look up these two recipes:

• Pineapple Clove Ham
• Sesame Dressing

Now, take a bag of mixed greens, a good portion of ham (include some of the semi fatty burnt edges but remove all cloves), add diced avocado, and toss with sesame dressing (I remade the dressing with garlic instead of shallots and it was a good call for this recipe).

I had to stop after every bite to exclaim, outloud (to myself, no one else was around) at how much I was enjoying this salad. It was super fun to have that experience with something so effing simple.

Pineapple Clove Ham

Ro is for Rotisserie. I got the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie and I am super geeked up. Its turkey season, hooray!

Pineapple Clove Ham
Take a 10 lb ham and cover with pineapple chunks attached by tooth picks. Plunge cloves into ham. Sprinkle with salt (not too much, these bad boys are already fairly salty), crushed red pepper and black pepper. Put on spit and let spin for two hours. The pineapple burns and falls off, but it give it the sweetness non-paleo eater enjoy from brown sugar.

Farmer Fresh to You! 2009-11-11

Here is what was in this week's box:

• 5 triple kiwis (see supplemental picture, these are freakish kiwi)
• 2 baskets of strawberries (one pictured, one previously ate)
• Green beans
• Mushrooms
• 7 Tomatoes
• Bag of mixed greens
• Large spaghetti squash
• 3 sweet potatoes (yams)
• Onion
• Garlic
• Lemon
• Huge bunch of basil
• 6 cucumbers (given away, cukes are worthless in my opinion)

Check out these freak kiwis! Kiwi is a super food, get geeked up about freak fruit! <>!

There are super anti-inflammatory foods here too: sweet potatoes, green beans, garlic, kiwi, tomatoes... well virtually everything. Hooray!

Lisette and Carol
Farmer Fresh To You
805.469.7604
www.farmerfreshtoyou.net

Mustard Garlic Chicken, w or w/o Coconut

This was a "Which way to go?" dish. I went both ways and I personally think the anti-coconut way was better. Maybe I'm biased from the month long Thai food kick I went on.

Take two chickens and dismember (1.17+1.20 PR for two chickens in one dismembering session, back to back, sub or at 1.20s is ridiculous especially when they were $0.59/lb from Ralphs). Season with salt and pepper. Coat in 3/2T curry powder + 2T dijion mustard. Rub with 17+ completely minced garlic cloves. Seperate chickens. Keep one chicken this way, sprinkle with crushed red pepper and bake.


Take other chickens and add two T coconut shavings (unsweetened). Bake along with other chicken for 40+ minutes at 400F.

For my $3.70, the one without coconut was much better. FYI.

Garlic Mincing 101

People love garlic. I don't know why this is such a huge flavor, becuase surely there are other flavors out there that are equal/ superior to this singled out go-to flavor. Regardless, here is how you mince your way to more effective garlic flavoring. I personally think that dried garlic, and things like garlic salt and dehydrated garlic have led to this revolution, but it is unncessecary. Here is how you make useful garlic from fresh garlic.

Take your garlic and smash, in skin, with large knife. Mince to the best of your ability, it should look like this:

Add about a T of super coarse sea salt to your garlic.

Smash that salt into your garlic. Take your knife and pound that into your garlic so that the granuals are intermingled into your garlic.

Mince again. This is where you see the garlic not stick to your knife. It is also when you see your previous 'mince' turn into 'chopped' becasue the fine cut is reduced substantially.
You can add oil, or salt, and refine, refine, refine. It just gets that much finer and more towards food proscessor level.

Get sick with it.