Paleo Progress

We have been doing pretty well with our attempts to shift our eating habits to the Paleo diet.  Dinner has been easy.  We've eaten a Paleo friendly dinner every night for the past few weeks.  As I predicted, breakfast and lunch have been a bit more of a challenge.  In an attempt to get my girls to eat more Paleo friendly breakfasts and not spend a ton of time cooking in the mornings, I made these cheesy egg muffins using a recipe I found on a website my brother sent me.  Here's the link to the recipe.  

I actually messed up the recipe because I doubled it, but forgot to double the amounts of any of the ingredients other than the eggs.  Duh.  They were still pretty good, but a bit dry for my taste.  I also used the same recipe (again, doubling only the eggs) to make another dozen egg muffins, but this time I used blueberries (I smashed them up a little bit when stirring them in) instead of cheese.  I thought my girls would be more likely to enjoy these, and I was right.  They were pretty good, though again, a touch dry for me.  I think next time I'll skip the coconut flour, yogurt, and baking powder and make these more like mini frittata muffins, with just eggs, a little coconut milk, and whatever other ingredients I decide to add.

The girls did eat up the muffins, and they also enjoyed to smoothies I made to go with them.

My favorite smoothie recipe:

2 bananas
2 handfuls of blueberries
8-9 frozen peach slices
Approximately a cup of unsweetened coconut milk (I like So Delicious brand, it comes in a carton like milk, rather than in a can)
Blend.
Drink.
I half this recipe for a 3-year-old-sized smoothie.

So, we've had some success with breakfasts.  I also made these pancakes last weekend.  The girls loved them.  There were enough leftover for a quick breakfast on a school morning, but I think next time I'll at least double the recipe and then have some to refrigerate and freeze.

Unfortunately, though I had plans for sausage, hard-boiled eggs and fruit, and a few other good breakfasts, Miss has been asking every morning since the pancakes have been gone for oatmeal.  I guess I just have to let the oatmeal run out and then get back into the good stuff.

Lunch has been similar.  We've had good days (chicken and corn today, ham and fruit the other day, etc) and not so good (PB&J, mac and cheese for a play date).  Surprisingly, I have learned that Miss really likes to eat "sandwiches" wrapped in lettuce.

This from the girl who really won't eat a sandwich otherwise, unless the bread is stuck together by it's contents (PB&J, grilled cheese).  If it's not, she just takes it apart and eats each component separately, so we don't do ham or turkey sandwiches here.  Unless they are wrapped in lettuce now.  I guess her lack of interest in bread sandwiches has turned out to be a good thing, since I don't have to try to get her out of the habit of eating bread so much.

We've done well with snacks, mostly eating different types of fresh and dried fruit, and Miss has discovered a love for cashews.  We have only resorted to bunny crackers once or twice when at the store during snack time.

I even developed my own yummy recipe for Paleo friendly hash, which we had for dinner last night.

I had some huge daikon radishes that I thought would substitute nicely for the potatoes in a hash, so I chopped one of them up into pretty small cubes (about a quarter inch to half inch square), browned it up with some onion and combined it with some browned ground venison. 

And it worked!  The hash was very yummy.  My husband even said it reminded him of the yummy greasy corned beef hash breakfast he used to get at the hospital where he used to work and has craved since.  I'll take that as a compliment, since the result of my efforts was actually not greasy at all.

Here's the "recipe," though I'll warn you in advance it's not terribly precise with measurements.

Paleo Daikon Radish Hash

One huge daikon radish, chopped into 1/4 to 1/2-inch cubes (it probably ended up being about 3-4 cups once chopped, if you're using several smaller radishes. I included the photos above, so you could kind of see how much).

One pound ground venison or beef

One medium yellow onion, chopped

Low sodium chicken broth (about 1 cup)

2 Tbsp butter

S&P to taste

Brown your meat.  Remove it to a bowl but leave the fat behind.  The venison had very little fat, so if you are using beef you might need to drain some of this off.  I probably had about 2 Tbsp of fat left in the pan.  Add the radish and onion, along with about 1/2 tsp kosher salt.  Stir to coat with fat, add the butter, then cover and let soften.  After a bit I thought it started to look a bit dry, so I added about 1/2 cup of low-sodium chicken broth.  When the veggies start to soften, take the cover off and stir frequently until they begin to brown (you should have the pan on medium high or hotter).  It took about 20-30 minutes for things to get softened up enough and begin to brown (this might go faster if the lid of your pan has a good seal to keep in the steam, mine doesn't).  Add the meat back into the pan along with another 1/2 cup or so of chicken broth.  Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until the radish and onion are soft and nicely browned.  Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

It was a great warm comfort-food dinner on a super cold night.

And speaking of super cold, I have not really been all that interested in taking the girls out for the past few days because it has just been so cold here.  Today it snowed as well, so we had a stay-in-the-house-and-in-our-jammies day.  It was nice, though I did start to feel a little bit cooped up after two days of not going anywhere.  I felt the need to spice things up a bit, so I brought out the play-dough.

I'll be honest and just say that I really hate play-dough.  It's just messy and I find it annoying.  What can I say?  It's not the most frequent activity in our house.  Okay, it's a very, very infrequent activity in our house.  But, that makes my girls love it all the more!!

 This was her very special creation - A fish!  She said she made it for Grandma.

And I'll be honest, now that we have this little plastic picnic table that I can easily bring into the kitchen for them to play on, the play-dough really wasn't that bad.  In fact, I could see us doing it a bit more often.  Maybe.  The girls loved it, so that made it worth it.

The girls also got creative with their dry erase crayons.  These things are awesome, BTW.  A friend of mine found these for her kids and got some for us too when she learned of my lack of enthusiasm for dry erase markers with a 17-month-old.  These are so easy to wipe off most surfaces and they don't rub off nearly as easily as markers, so if you brush against the board you don't wind up with crayon all over yourself.  But, they do clean up relatively easily with a wet cloth.

Miss kept asking me what I wanted her to draw with her blue (her favorite color).

This is the look she gave me when I asked her to draw a square.  She said, "I already drawed a square Mama."

Well then.

It's supposed to warm up a bit this weekend so we'll be venturing out some.  Stay warm!

Rainy Day Ride and a Recipe

Today was rainy.  The girls were a little stir crazy after dinner tonight, so the Daddy brought in their wagon for a little ride.

They thought this was just about the coolest thing.  Then it broke, and they had fits.  But we colored and read books and did puzzles the rest of the night, and all was well.

On a totally unrelated note, several weeks ago I posted about my last "Chopped" ingredients.  If you recall, these were Duck breast, Avocado, and Gouda cheese.  I used the ingredients to make dinner a couple of weeks ago and have forgotten to post about it.  I made Duck and Gouda Hoagies with Avocado Spread.  I didn't write down the recipe, thinking I would post about it while it was still fresh in my memory.  I have a pretty good memory, but this one might be a little fuzzy.

My ingredients:
4 duck breasts, skin removed
1 avocado
Gouda cheese, sliced
Salt and Pepper
Flour
Vegetable oil
1 Shallot, finely chopped
Maybe one or two cloves of garlic?
About a half cup of dry white wine
Mayonnaise
Hoagie Buns
One apple (optional)

I started by slicing the duck breasts crossways into about 1/2 inch-thick pieces.  Then I dried these, sprinkled them with salt and pepper on both sides, and coated them with flour.  I heated my pan over medium high heat, added about a tablespoon of oil, and put in the first batch of duck pieces.

I browned the duck pieces on both sides, then removed to a plate and continued with the other pieces in batches (adding a bit of oil with each batch).

After I got all the duck pieces cooked and set aside, I put the shallot in the pan to soften.  I can't remember if I added a couple of pressed cloves of garlic after the shallot was soft.  I think I did.  If so, I would have waited until the shallot was soft, then added the pressed garlic and stirred it around until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Then I added the wine and scraped all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan.  I let this reduce a few minutes.  Then I put this mixture into the blender with the avocado, some mayo and some salt and pepper and tried to puree it to a really smooth texture.  I should have used my Magic Bullet, because the blender didn't do a very good job of pureeing the small pieces of shallot.  So, the final outcome of this avocado-mayo spread was a little lumpy.  While I was working on this spread, I preheated the broiler, put some duck meat into a each of two hoagie buns, topped it with slices of gouda, and put it in the oven.  Once the cheese was melted, I pulled them out, put the avocado spread on the top of the bun, and it was done.  I should have used a lower heat to melt the cheese, because my buns ended up getting burned, but the result was still good.  I also should have toasted the buns beforehand, because the bottom bun was a bit soft relative to the super crispy top bun.  Oh well.  I was in a hurry...

On my hoagie I put slices of apple, which I thought added a crunch and sweetness that was very yummy.  My husband is not a fan of apples on sandwiches, so I left them off his.

This was a successful meal, if not the most dazzling thing I've created.  The best part was the way I cooked the duck.  I relied on a strategy learned partly from my dad and partly from my cooking class in coating the duck with flour.  This really helped to hold in some of the moisture and the result was very flavorful, tender, and moist duck meat.  Score.  The least successful part of the dish was the avocado spread.  It ended up a little bland, and the chunks of shallot didn't do anything for it.  If I made this again I would probably skip the shallots and pan deglazing all together and just use the avocado, some mayo, and some fresh herbs, maybe a little lemon or lime juice to brighten the flavor of the spread and keep it smooth.  My apologies for the haphazard "recipe."  This is the best I can recall, several weeks later.

My husband has been working nights for the past two weeks, so we have been neglecting to select the ingredients for my next challenge.  Tonight is his last night to work (hooray!!), and we finally remembered to choose the goodies.  What did I end up with?  Tuna (canned), Panko bread crumbs, and Tomato paste. I already have a good idea what I'm going to do.  If it works, I'll try to bring you that recipe with a bit more precision.

Spaghetti Squash with Spinach Meat Sauce

I tackled my latest Chopped ingredients the other night: Spaghetti Squash, Spinach, and Merguez Sausage.  My husband made the merguez, and it was delicious.  I was correct in my belief that the sausage would be smoky, sweet, and have a little heat.  Honestly, it was probably the best sausage I've ever eaten.  I was pretty excited to create a yummy dish with these more reasonable, normal ingredients.  I decided to make a sort of "Spaghetti" with Meat Sauce, of course using the squash as the spaghetti and making the sauce using spinach instead of tomatoes.  It turned out great.

Here are my little sous chefs.

Spaghetti (Squash) with Spinach Meat Sauce
1 Large spaghetti squash
2 Merguez sausages (if you can't find this type of sausage, you could use chorizo or Italian sausage)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
Salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 11-oz pkg spinach
1/2 cup heavy cream

Pierce the squash several times with a knife.  Put it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes.  Turn it over and microwave it for another six minutes.  Let it sit for a while to continue steaming.

Remove the sausage from the casing, crumble and brown it over medium high heat.  When it's nice and browned, remove it to a paper-towel-lined plate. Leave the drippings and browned bits of sausage stuck to the bottom in the pan.  Cover it with foil to keep it warm.

Return the pan with drippings to medium high heat.  Add the onion and about 1/2 tsp of salt to the pan and cook until onion softens, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute.  Add wine.  If there are any browned bits of sausage or onion left on the bottom of the pan, scrape them up into the sauce.  Let the wine reduce for a minute or two.  Add 2 Tbsp butter and stir until it melts.  Add spinach and stir to coat with sauce.  Cook until it is nicely wilted (photo below is only partially wilted).

While spinach is cooking, slice open squash (you'll probably need an oven mitt), scoop out seeds, and then pull out strands of squash with a fork or spoon and set aside.

Once spinach is wilted, put the entire contents of your pan into the blender.  When pan is empty, return it to medium low heat, add the remaining two Tbsp butter, let it melt, and put the squash strands in the pan.  Add about 1/2 Tsp salt.  Stir to coat with butter and cook for several minutes.  The main purpose of this is to try to evaporate some of the water that comes out with the squash so it's not super wet when you put it on your plate, as well as adding a bit more flavor to it.  Puree the spinach mixture.  Add cream and continue to blend until smooth.  Add S&P to taste.  Put sauce, "spaghetti" and sausage on the plate!

This dish turned out really well.  The sauce was delicious.  The only thing I might have done differently was to use one more sausage, because there wasn't quite enough for two servings plus what we gave to the girls.

Next up: Gouda Cheese, Avocado, and Duck Breast!

Tofu Chocolate Pudding

We went to PetSmart today to get some dog food and I happened to see some fancy "chocolate" dog treats. I got a package of them for our dog, and Miss immediately started saying, "I want some chocolate treats too!" I explained to her that the treats were only for dogs, but that wasn't quite going to cut it with my chocolate-loving two year old. I remembered a recipe I have for chocolate pudding with tofu, so I told her we'd make that when we got home. She wasn't happy about having to wait a while for it to chill after we got it made (though she was pacified a bit by being able to lick the leftover melted chocolate from the bowl), and it was the first thing she asked for when she woke up from her nap. It only took a few minutes to make, and it was fantastic.

I even let Lass try a little bite.

She had to think about it for a second.

She liked it.

Tofu pudding sounds kind of weird, but it really was delicious. I had never used soft tofu before (I've only ever used tofu once before, in fact). I ate a portion of it and so did my husband. He called it, "Ridonkulous" which means super-awesome fabulously yummy. Here's the recipe, which I changed a little bit from a recipe in the July issue of Parenting magazine.

1 12-oz pkg shelf-stable soft silken tofu

3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted

1/2 cup ultrafine granulated sugar (the recipe called for powdered sugar, but I didn't have any)

2 tsp vanilla

a pinch of salt

Combine all ingredients in a blender and mix until creamy. Put it into small cups or bowls and put into the fridge to let it set up. Done.

I was really happy to give Miss a snack with nutritious, protein-packed tofu in it. Of course, this pudding is also sugar-packed, so it is certainly a treat. I'll make it again, but only once in a while, and next time I'll probably cut the amount of sugar in half. However, I am now convinced of the wonders of this soft tofu for use in puddings, smoothies, etc. I'm thinking of all sorts of other, less sugary things I can blend with it next time, like bananas, berries, orange juice, honey, and on and on.

And speaking of tofu, my next at home "Chopped" ingredients are plantains, bacon bits, and yes, tofu. It has taken me a while to get going on this one because I've not been able to find plantains in a store here, so I just ordered some and will get on it when they arrive. I think I know what I'm going to do. I have to redeem myself after my pickled herring failure. I'll let you know how it goes.

Home Run

Raisins and cherry tomatoes were my at-home-"Chopped" ingredients this week. I thought and thought for a week about what to do with them. Initially I was going to cook them with some onions and broth and spices and then puree them into a sauce for some pork tenderloin medallions. Then I realized that the skin and seeds of the tomatoes would probably not work well in a pureed sauce, so I scratched that idea. I finally settled on making a pan sauce for pork tenderloin using the raisins and then doing a side dish by caramelizing some fennel bulb (my new favorite vegetable since I learned how to cook it in my cooking class) with some raisins and then adding in the tomatoes. I wanted to use caramelized onions and raisins in a sauce (topping might be a better word than sauce, because the raisins and onion made it chunky) for the pork but add in just a bit of heat to compliment, brighten, and balance the sweetness of these ingredients. Similarly, I thought the tomatoes would balance the sweetness of the caramelized fennel and raisins in the side dish. Yeah. I hit a home run with this one. Here are both of the recipes.

Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Raisins and Onions

1 Pork Tenderloin (about 1 lb)

Salt and Pepper

1 Tbsp Vegetable oil

1 Onion, halved and sliced thinly

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 cup chicken broth

3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 Tbsp pieces

Trim fat and silvery skin from the tenderloin. Slice it into 1-inch-thick medallions. Season with S&P on both sides. Then press the tenderloins (with your hands or the flat side of a knife) until it's about 3/4 inch thick. Heat your pan over medium high heat. Put in the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add half of the pork pieces. Sear them on one side for 2 minutes, then flip them using tongs and sear the other side for about 2 minutes more (they should be firm around the sides). Remove to plate and cover with foil. Repeat with the rest of the pork. Add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, stirring occasionally. Add the raisins. Let the onions and raisins cook together for a while so the onions get nicely caramelized. Add wine, cayenne and paprika. If you don't like spicy, you can reduce the amounts of these, but I would recommend still adding them, maybe at about 1/2 of the amount I used. Let the wine reduce by about half. Pour in the chicken broth and any juice from the tenderloin pieces that has accumulated on the plate and continue to simmer for a few minutes longer. Off the heat, add the butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, swirling each Tbsp piece around until it melts. Serve the sauce over the pork medallions.

Fennel with Raisins and Cherry Tomatoes

1 tsp Vegetable oil

2 Fennel bulbs, julienned

1 Tbsp sugar

1/4 cup raisins, chopped

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

Sprinkle of salt

Heat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil, then fennel. Stir fennel to coat with oil and add sugar. Stir, then add raisins. Cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the fennel soften and start to caramelize. I can't remember how long this took, but the fennel will start to darken and get soft, but still have a little bit of bite to it. Add the tomatoes and stir them in. cook for a few more minutes to let the tomatoes start to soften, but don't let them get too mushy. Sprinkle a little salt on, stir, serve.

I was so happy with the way these dishes turned out. Lots of flavor and great textures. The only thing I might have done differently would be to add more wine, chicken broth and butter to the pan sauce to have more of the liquid part of the sauce. It was yummy.

We have already decided to go to 3 ingredients this next week and I drew them from our spreadsheet. I do it like the old game Battleship, picking coordinates that my husband matches up the the spaces on his spreadsheet. The one way that we limit what comes up is that he makes sure at least one of the ingredients is a protein. So, next week? Sweet pickles. Bran cereal. And Pickled Herring. Yes, you read that right. Pickled Herring. My husband told me this and then said, "I hate pickled herring." What?! This freaked me out a little, because I thought I was doomed from the start if he hates it (I've never had it, so I have no idea, though I can imagine, how vile it is). I was prepared to go ahead with it, but I think he felt bad for including such a horrendous ingredient on his list. He suggested we draw a different protein, and we did. The next one that came up was Canned tuna. But after thinking about it for a bit, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the herring. That's the challenge, right? Taking something crazy, and potentially kind of gross, and making it fabulous? *gulp* Hubby did point out that it's actually a win-win situation for me though. If the dish I make is horrible, I can blame it on the herring. If it's delicious, I become a cooking goddess. Score. I told him I can't even begin to plan what I'm going to make though until I go to the store and get some herring and taste it. I have no idea what it's texture or consistency or taste is like, so I can't figure out what I'll do until I know that. Wish me luck!!

In other exciting news from the weekend (and to get on to the cute pics), we got our swing set delivered on Friday! The Hubby and I started putting it together during nap time yesterday.

Naturally we couldn't get it all done while the girls were sleeping, so they joined us outside while we continued to work on it.

We had to put in some more time this morning, though it was mostly the hubby getting it done today because the girls were awake the whole time. Finished product:

We have to trim up the landscaping and the dead stuff underneath a bit and put down some soft mulch, but the girls didn't care about that. They went right to it after they woke from naps.

This one continues to amaze me with her climbing. My mom says she gets it from me.



And no, she didn't actually climb all the way onto the platform by herself, but she did climb the ladder all the way to the top, until her hands reached the platform and she wasn't sure what to do with them to keep climbing. I don't have photos of that part of her performance, because I was hovering around her as spotter just in case. She never even faltered though!

I love this swing set and I know the girls will get so much fun out of it. According to my husband, who had to deal with most of the inevitable frustrations of putting such a contraption together, they'd better!

As a last note, please excuse the status of my header right now. I thought it was about time to change up the photos, but for some reason could not get the far left photo to fit in the header correctly. Also, some of the photos in this post have a bit of a foggy look to them. It's because my camera lens fogged up when I took it from inside the air conditioning to the muggy outside. Sorry!