Kale and Ham

Remember that pulled ham? It lends itself extremely well to making other dishes. Here is an easy one. Take about 6 cloves of garlic, saute in olive oil, add a bunch of cut up kale with crushed red pepper and saute. Add as much ham as you like (remember, I had like 10 pounds of this). Heat and eat, it is delish.

Pulled Hammie: Food Version 1.0

So this is a step outside of the traditional Ham box. This was universally recieved as unique and useful. Not profound like my last ham, but so unique and so versital, tasty, spicy, and applicable that you will see a few extra recipes with it in it.

Pulled Ham

Take a smoked ham (not spiral cut, not covered in syrup, etc.) and cut largely from bone into huge chunks. Cover in black pepper and grill until fat is crisp. Cut pieces even further. Place into crock pot with bay leaves, pepper corn, tamarind (about a cup), mustard, chili pepper, garlic, leeks and water. I cooked it on "low" for 12+ hours and on "warm" for another couple hours. Pull apart with forks.

It is awesome and it works with tons of other stuff, as you will see shortly. Think outside the roastiserie.

The Perfect Ribs

Okay, so without futher ado, here is my best shot at making it as a BBQ guy. My buddy Dave ate these things for an hour straight, it was amazing. But I'm seriously, this is the third pass at this sauce for me, coupled with solid cooking fundementals, and then taken to 11. I think I had 4 or 5 people say that they were the best ribs that they had ever had. Ribs are fairly common, this is paleo, so that is a huge compliment. I used 10-11p of pork spare ribs for this recipe.

The Marinade: Water
Be virtuous in all that you do. Strive for 11. If you are going to make a sweet painting, you prime the canvas. So too when you are setting out for a master piece on the pork canvas of life, you must prime your carcas. Here is how you do it: brine.

Take about 3q+ of water and add 1/4c of rock salt to it. Now, the rules of saturation and dissolution will dominate this step, so if you want to remain sane while waiting for the salt to dissolve, you must heat water gently until the salt is suspended in the solution. This gives you a great opprotunity to add a couple bay leaves, full peppercorns, and olive oil to the water. Heat until salt crystals are completely dissolved. Remove from heat. Submerge ribs in water for at least 8 hours. This is what we call brining, its a water based marinade that, via osmosis (the absorption of liquid through membranes), a more tender piece of meat is created.

The Grill
This is no small part. Ideally the grill should be a charcol or a straight oak-log grill. Seriously guys, propane will not do what is intended for this dish. I made Drew, Dave and the Ninos drive almost 2/3 of a mile to get charcol for this one (each way!!!!!). If you want the same taste, you need to add crushed oregano, double the cumin, cut the vinegar, and somehow add a citrus to the water marinade at the end. Just get a charcol grill.

The Cooking
Cook on Weber, covered, with good smoke flow, no visible flames, for 45 minutes per side. Rotate positions as needed for uniformity. Baste in the sauce after cooking each side.

The Sauce
Um, this one will turn heads. Add 4+T tamarind to 1+T dijion mustard, a small amount of chipotle oil or powdered chipotle pepper, also add a decent amount of dehydrated onion, 1t granulated garlic, chili-garlic sauce, 1/2t stale black pepper, salt TT, a few T of apple cider vineager, 1/2t cumin. Sprimkle with cinnamon. Thin out with olive oil. Seriously, thin that shit out.

This is the second serious point in this sauce though: TT means: To Taste. + means: around this amount, maybe more, taste then add. Decent amount: go heavy until you think its too much. A few means: 1+TT. Seriously.

The Parting Words
I actually got text messages about these ribs. Thats pretty amazing since I cooked them and was there when they were served fresh.

WOD Schedule for Next Week

So, it seems like me and some of my favortie people (JS) are missing each other all the time at CFV thanks to the new hours/ rules. I figured I'd post ahead of time in hopes of increasing the chances of cross scheduling our crossfitting. Colin and I talked and this looks like what I will try to lock into going forward, assuming no travelling or injuries, etc.

Sunday: CFV, 10.00
Monday: Dot Com/ CFV Make Up/ Manatee WOD at Globo or track or equivalent
Tuesday: Rest/ Active Rest
Wednesday: CFV, 18.00
Thursday: CFV, 18.00
Friday: Dot Com/ CFV Make Up/ Manatee WOD at Globo or track or equivalent
Saturday: Rest/ Active Rest

This work well since getting the 18.00 Monday class is super hard, and I want to get the most of my Manatee WODs, which I can re-program after seeing how CJ and WBHH fuck us up the days prior.

Also, that thursday lunch WOD is a possibility.

Pork Chops w Awesome Sauce

These were just two baby pork chops cooked on a cast iron pan, but the sauce was awesome. Very casually throw together a few spoonfuls tamanrind sauce, a squeeze of dijion, a decent amount of chipotle oil, and a spoonful of garlic chili sauce. Season both chops and sauce with salt and pepper and baste after each side is cooked. Cook in olive oil with four minced garlic cloves for ten minutes on the first side, five-ish on the second. This was out of this world. I served with with sauted sweet potatoes covered in cinamonn, also good.

Fresh Wild Yellow Fin Salad

Fuck, sometimes going paleo pays for itself. If you rock Paleo well, you eat like a king and you see huge benefits. And then the people who see your paleo benefits and also kick ass on it sometimes then they give you rewards.

Remember when Karma smiled on me? She kept it up today. My friend Carol dropped a huge piece of freshly caught yellow fin tuna on me today! The only thing to do? Cook the new roommate a ridiculous meal. Thanks Care, and Dave: here is how you sear tuna.

Fresh Wild Yellow Fin Salad
Cut a huge chunk of tuna off. Mine was like three inches on a side (cubes are great, mine had 5 sides). Coat in a substantial amount of olive oil. Make a rub for your tuna: With a mortar and pestle, grind up so whole black peppercorns. Add coarse sea salt and 3/4t ground ginger, combine. Rub liberally all over oiled up fish. Sprinkle sesame seeds over fish. Take a skillet and coat bottom liberally with olive oil (stainless would be best, but I used a Teflon pan). Heat until oil is just beginning to smoke (this is much higher heat than normally recommended for olive oil). Sear for 20 seconds per side, no more than 1.40m. Chill immediately! Put it on a plate in fridge to stop cooking.

Make a salad. I made a bib lettuce and arugula salad tossed in my favorite sesame seed dressing. I then took the tossed salad, plated it, and covered it with Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced red onion, and each plate got a thinly sliced Thai chili. Sprinkle with coarse ground pepper and salt. Go get that tuna hunk.

Thinly slice tuna (I might add that I did a horrible job with this step, this means that I need to practice, that means that I need more "Huge Tuna Donations" from loyal readers. Thanks again Care, this was awesome). Place over salad.

This was a pretty impressive first impression for me to make on the new roommie, and Carol and the Karma Gods (did I just come up with a new band name) smiled on me.

Farmer Fresh to You! Italian Veggie Dream

• Onion
• Garlic
• Cauliflower
• Brocolli
• 2 Artichokes
• 2 Bunches Asparagus
• Arugola
• Mint
• Lemon
• 2 Boxes Raspberries
• 5 Kiwis
• 2 Avocados
• 2 Parsnips
• Purple Grapes

Awesome box again. So many Italian flavors, I wish I could make pasta sauce...

Farmer Fresh To You
2055 San Onofre Drive
Camarillo California 93012
United States of America

Soup a la Denmark

Umm, this isn't Danish. Rather, the friends I made from Denmark always told me that when they made soup they always used whatever leftovers they had in their fridge ('Just throw it all in a pot.' my friend Sissin would say). This act of "Grab and Toss" is what I have done, and, unfortunately, I misdiagnosed my peas in my Farmer Fresh box (the peas were shelling peas), and hence, not Paleo. So, although I designed this Danish Soup with Paleo intentions, it wasn't meant to be, first time ever for me, fuck, what happened to me?

This is excellent and I can't believe the peas cost me a paleo title, there was less than a handful in this entire recipe.

Take 4 minced cloves, a huge pinch of red pepper, and lots of olive oil and saute. Add 1/2T celery salt. Add have of fresh oregano bunch from FFTY box. Add finely diced onion. Cut up bunch of white carrots into rounds, add. Cut up a pound of fingerling potatoes, add. Saute for ten minutes. Add four cups water and 4 bay leaves, bring to boil. Reduce to simmer. Cut each of 6 Roma tomatoes into sixteen pieces and add. Continue to simmer. Cut about 1.5p turkey into bite sized pieces, add, boil and simmer. Add two cups water. Add shelled peas and bring to boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. Remove bay leaves and serve.

Home Made Jerky

This was my big holiday present, it took me a while to locate a slicer but here is my first home made jerky.

Take 2+p of lean beef (super key, you probably don't want a bunch of fat on your jerkey) slice 1/4" pieces, coat in salt, pepper and/or crushed red pepper. Set to high and dehydrate for 9 hours.

It tastes good (more like steak), and very different than globostore bought MSG brand jerkey. I will have to figure this one out and let y'all know.

Strawberry and Beet Salad

This one goes out to my guy Seth in IC, keep thrusting towards the heating ducts.

Take bib lettuce, add cut up strawberries, baked white beets (let cool somewhat), and cover with my Balsamic vinaigrette. Season with salt and pepper. Easy, and so good even children love it.

Baked White Beets

This is easy: slice beets to about 1/4-3/8", coat in olive oil and salt. Crack fresh pepper over beets and roast at 350F for 35 minutes. I used these in the salad to follow, but you can use them for anything you want, or just eat them as is. I didn't do much to these since I knew I was going to pair them with my Balsamic dressing.

Cabbage Scramble

I have been thinking about the balance aspect of my diet and want to try to bring that to the forefront of my mind while making food. I'm not a "Zone-Guy" but it is an easy way to analyze proportions and volume. Here is my first attempt.

3 eggs - 3P
2 Strips Bacon -7.5F
2 Roma Tomatoes - .75C
Cabbage - .5C
Onion - .5C
2 Thai Chilies - ?

Totals - 3P, 7.5F, 1.75C

Is that balanced? I don't know. I feel great after eating that, no hunger, discomfort, etc. Its kind eye opening in the proportions that I naturally choose are a 2-3x fat, 1/2x carbs.

Cauliflower Bacon Medley

The concept of this dish was super hard for me to come to grips with. It basically came down to this: I had a head of cauliflower that I wanted to eat, I have a fully cooked turkey with no one to help me eat it, what the fuck am I going to do with them? Granted that's not the best picture, and this dish has some major issues (what I would consider issues, not what most people consider issues), but it is tasty, easy to make, and just used my whole head of cauliflower and 13oz of turkey.

Cauliflower Bacon Medley

Simmer a whole head of cauliflower flowerettes in 1 cup of Brandon's Paleo Broth, cover, cook until tender, strain. In another pan cook some cut up, chorizo-spiced bacon. I used three pieces because I thought they would poor out fat, but they didn't and I needed that fat to cook the following ingredients: 1/2 thinly sliced red onion, two cloves garlic, 13oz turkey. 6-7 slices would have done it. Maybe the turkey was just over cooked and soaked up all the fat, but either way, as soon as I added the turkey to the bacon/onion/garlic it dried up on me. I added some olive oil, salt, pepper, and red pepper (late addition for me, I'm trying new things too). Add cauliflower, stir. Again, I had to add more chorizo spice and olive oil. Simmer briefly and eat.

Cut your cauliflower pieces into bite size pieces, I left mine huge, forgetting that tender cauliflower doesn't cut with a fork.

Spicy Italian Turkey

Heres the rub:

• 1t Thyme, basil, oregano, rosemary, salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper
• 1/2t Ground sage, and granulated garlic.

Rotate and heat for 3+ hours. This rub is based on the type of seasoning found on high end deli meats. The beauty for me is that this bird was like $8 for 15+ pounds, not 10$/p like at the deli counter!

Addendum: My buddy Matt absolutely loved this turkey reheated. It was retarded good, you'll see it in the Danish Soup recipe too, it may have made the soup too.

Farmer Fresh to You is Back

After weeks of Jordan trying to play home maker and the holidays, maybe some sanity can return to my life of air squats and vegetables.
This weeks provisions:

• 6 Tangerines
• Red onion
• Garlic
• Lemon
• Fingerling potatoes
• 2 Baskets of strawberries
• 1 Basket of blueberries
• Bib lettuce
• 4 Large white beets (huh?)
• 1 Large bunch of white carrots
• Fresh oregano
• Snap Peas
• 14 Roma tomatoes

I'm very happy with this spread this week and can't wait to get my routine/ life back in order and start making balanced meals again.

Farmer Fresh To You
2055 San Onofre Drive
Camarillo California 93012
www.farmerfreshtoyou.net

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