Sweet Potato Chili Fries

I stole this recipe from PaleOMG, although I suppose since I'm telling you this it's sharing, not stealing? Anyway, I made these tonight and they are delicious. What they lack in the crispiness of real fries they make up for in flavour.

EDIT: did you know there are sweet potatos that aren't bright orange?? I got some various brands of sweet potato from the farmers market this week, and some were purple, while some were red on the outside and white inside! These non orange sorts seemed to crisp much better (sometimes the orange ones are a bit soggy).

They don't even have any gluten in them which, since it's Wheat Month, is actually a problem right now. Which brings me to the real reason Wheat Month is going to make me fat, aside from the wheat. It's because my thought process, when I'm allowed to run about consuming wheat products at my leisure, goes like this: "Hm....what shall I have for dinner? I know, paleOMG's chili fries. Oh shoot, there's no gluten in those...." at which point I wandered around the grocery store looking for a gluten product worth consuming and left with a box of President's Choice Decadent Peanut Butter Icecream Sandwiches. I won't tell you how delicious they were because that would be mean.

NOTE: Nick points out I did not have to buy junk food to get my gluten, I could have thickened my chili with flour like a normal person. Touche. I'll remember that.....once the cookies are gone....

paleOMG's Sweet Potato Chili Fries

I did mine slightly differently than Juli (i.e., I did less work because I'm lazy). Also she somehow has sweet potatoes that aren't bright orange....dunno where to get those.

Ingredients

• One large sweet potato. Pick one that's stout and round not long and warped for optimum fry size
• Ground beef or sausage
• 2-3 tomatoes, diced
• seasonings to taste (salt, pepper, paprika, chili powder, garlic/onion powder, a dash of cayenne pepper)
• half a sliced avacado

1.  Start browning your ground beef or sausage
2. Slice your potato into fries (cut in half and quarters lengthwise, etc, until you have somewhat even fry sized strips.
3. Dust the fries lightly with olive oil. If you put too much they won't crisp.
4. Salt the fries and bake on ~400 until squishy (cooked) and then broil for a few minutes (to crisp) until your smoke detector tells you they're done.
5. Meanwhile, add diced tomatoes to the meat and season. Simmer until the tomatoes are all juiced and the chili starts to thicken again.
6. Make a nest with your fries and plop the chili in the middle. Serve with a sliced avocado to cut the heat of the cayenne and get some tasty fats.

Zucchini Linguine and other noodle substitutes

So, Christmas happened, and I fell off the paleo wagon in a big way. To be fair to myself, that was my intention. After completing a 10 week paleo challenge on December 23rd, during which I had only a handful of (mostly non-glutenous) cheats, I went home to mom's in London and I ate. A lot. Indiscriminately. I'll excuse myself for the gluten and sugar-filled Christmas dinner under my self-composed Plan to Cheat clause. For the rest of the holiday, I have no defense, except perhaps that gluten from mom's house doesn't count?

Climbing back aboard the paleo wagon is going to be made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I did not experience any immediate negative feedback from stuffing my face with...well stuffing. I did, however, experience several delayed consequences. The first was what I can only assume to be one mad sugar hangover (imagine feeling like you've been drinking all night, without the pleasure of a single glass of wine). In addition, my performance upon returning to the gym has been rather sub-par (I haven't been winded after a 500m warmup row in some time...)

I had planned to share the recipes from our pre-Christmas paleo cookie exchange, but in light of my recent vegetable cravings, I've decided my body has the right idea; the cookies can wait for another day. Instead, I'm sharing my favourite pasta substitutes. Pasta, as I see it, is really just a vessel for the sauce (with the possible exception of fresh, made from scratch noodles with nothing but parmesan, butter, and salt/pepper, but I digress). If you've been missing spaghetti, these substitutes are very tasty and often satisfy my noodle-type cravings.

Paleo Pasta
My favourite paleo "noodle" is spaghetti squash (pictured to the left). Cleave the squash lengthwise in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake face down for about 30 min or until a fork pierces the skin. Scrape out the innards with a fork and you've got spaghetti! Bonus: toss the cleaned seeds in olive oil and seasalt and toast in the oven for a tasty snack.

Zuccini is the next best noodle (on the right, with a tomato and cream cheese rose sauce and crumbled sausage). You can slice it with a mandoline for more spaghetti type noodles, or use a vegetable peeler lengthwise to make lingine. I've seen directions that suggest you saute or boil the noodes, but I find that if the sauce is hot enough you can just pour it on the raw noodles and they heat up sufficiently.

The last subsitute I've tried is chopped cabbage. It was hardly pasta-like in texture, but served as a handy vessel for my meatsauce one evening when I was feeling lazy.

Go nuts with your favourite sauce. I've put a couple suggestions below.

My version of a Meat Sauce

1. Brown ground beef or sausage in a large pan.
2. Add things that need sauteing like mushrooms, onions, peppers, carrots, and/or garlic
3. Add a diced tomato or 2 or three. Probaby you'd add tomato paste here, if you had that sort of thing, which I usually don't.
4. Season: I use lots of paprika and chili powder, salt and pepper, oregano and any other herb I feel like that day.
5. Simmer. Sometimes I add a bit of water. I usually leave the lid on for a bit to let the flavours distribute, and then leave the lid off to reduce moisture.
6. Sometimes I put a bit of red wine.

Usually by the time my squash is done baking, or I've finished making zucchini noodles, the sauce is ready to serve!

Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I haven't tried this exact recipe, but I made a similar tasty sauce for some porkchops and this one looks tastier (from Family Living Simple).

Ingredients
2 Tablespoons of Ghee or coconut oil
3 Cloves of Garlic
1 Cup of Mushrooms sliced
1/2 Onion chopped
1 Cup Coconut Milk (Full Fat)
1/4 Cup White wine
Pepper
Parsley

Heat the butter in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until transluscent. Add the chopped Garlic and cook a few more minutes. Add the mushrooms. Mix everything up really well to make sure to coat all the mushrooms. Continue to cook for 3-5 more minutes. Add the wine and make sure it boils to cook off the alcohol. Turn the heat down to Medium low and add in the coconut milk. Add spices and let the sauce thicken a little bit and then remove from heat.

They served their sauce on steak but it looked like an excellent pasta sauce to me! Let me know if you try it.

Internet ingredient search says: Sausage and Kale Soup!

Today I had planned sausage for dinner with a side of kale, but didn't feel like eating them in the usual way. The internet suggested I make soup, and happily I took google's advice because it was delicious! I've never made soup before so I am disproportionately pleased with myself :D The recipe below is an amalgamation of various internet suggestions.

Sausage and Kale Soup

Ingredients
4 sausages, any kind
1 bunch of kale
1 onion
1 or more tomatoes
a bit of ginger, for fun
about 4 cups of water
sea salt and ground pepper
paprika, cumin, chili powder

other vegetables that I will consider adding next time: turnip, brocolli, cauliflower, carrot, leek....

1. Brown the sausages. I used Tomato and Basil Chicken sausages from VG Meats. They were tasty, but my favourite is their fennel sausages. Check out this place (in Stoney Creek) for awesome, well priced, hormone free meats, and grass fed (!) beef.
2. Set the sausage aside, dice the onions, and saute in some oil (I used my big wok).
3. I added a splash of red wine here.
4. When the onions are translucent, add a diced tomato (I think I'll add more next time) and the ginger (optional)
5. Slice the sausage and toss back into the wok. At this point I realized I had misplaced my chicken stock, which is what the internet recipes all called for next. Not to be discouraged, I decided to just add a bunch of water, spice the crap out of the thing, and hope for the best.
6. Add water, I think I used about 4 cups, but I kept adding throughout to make sure all of the contents were covered.
7. Season with lots of sea salt and ground pepper, some garlic salt, and my usual three spices (lots of paprika, a bit of chili powder, and a pinch of cumin). I think the salt/pepper/paprika was the important flavour here.
8. Let that simmer (I left the lid on) for about 15 minutes.
9. In the meantime, cut the kale from its stems and coarsely chop
10. Add the kale to the wok.

KALE

Don't be alarmed, it shrinks

While I let everything simmer I attempted to address the disaster zone in my kitchen. By the time I'd finished my dishes the kale had been simmering for about 25 minutes. I think 15 would have been fine, just taste it to see if it's wilted to your satisfaction. The longer it simmers, says the internet, the mellower its flavour. I also added more spices part way through so be sure to taste your broth as you go along.

Serve! (My batch made enough for two meals)
I hope you have a ladle for this part. Having never made soup, and having previously had roomates who owned ladles, I did not. Being rather afraid of trying to pour from the giant wok directly into a bowl, I stood in my kitchen for a full minute, panicked that I would never figure out how to eat my dinner, before I came to my senses and realized that ladels aren't the only scoop shaped containers. I used a mug, and have updated my shopping list accordingly.