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.

New Year's Life Resolution: Change your relationship with food

This is something that I've been working on since I started crossfit, and I think that it is perhaps one of the most important keys to successfully changing your lifestyle long term.

Food, to me, used to be the enemy. Every calorie consumed was something else to feel guilty about, and anything with fat (read: anything tasty) not only made me feel like I'd commited some sort of crime, but I also felt angry at myself for not resisting it.

Success requires not only a change in what you eat, but also a change in how you think about eating. Food is not the enemy, and neither is fat (stay tuned for a more thorough review of fatty foods, there are lots of good resources out there). The mantra that I employed to rewire my brain is as follows:

1. Food is fuel
2. Pick good fuel

It seems obvious, but I think in the midst of obsessing over food and dieting, we often forget that the whole point of eating is to fuel your body (and your brain!) so it can do stuff. Furthermore it does stuff better with good fuel (that Ferrari needs high test!). I found that thinking about food in this way every time I eat not only helps me to make better choices daily, but also relieves that guilty feeling that used to come with eating.

We could quibble forever about the details of what exactly constitutes "good fuel"; research is constantly evolving what we believe to be true about how our bodies use food as fuel. The best we can do is to arm ourselves with knowledge (if you're curious, look it up, and read at least one article arguing each side), and pay attention to our bodies. If it makes you feel better, gives you more energy, or improves your life in any way, it's probably good fuel.

The last piece of my mantra contributes more to mental well-being than to physical health, but is also a key to my success:

3. Enjoy your fuel.

It's really important to me that my fuel be tasty. If it's not, then how can I expect any changes to be sustainable? There's no point in depriving yourself to look better if it just makes you miserable. Increasing my happiness is just as important to me as improving my fitness. And frankly, sometimes this means eating a piece of chocolate. Sometimes, the cocoa makes me happier than resisting it, and if I know I've made good choices the rest of the week, I'm not about to punish myself for it. Besides, what are we doing all this working out for if we don't get to enjoy life a little! :)

What the heck do you eat for breakfast?

Breakfast was the hardest meal for me when I started eating Paleo. As I mentioned in my very first post, I've had a bagel with peanut butter (or sometimes cream cheese) every morning of my entire life. Occasionally I'd branch out and have toast.

My new workday routine breakfast consists of 2 eggs (fried or scrambled in coconut oil), and a bowl of "cereal" (I think I got the idea from coach Jen). And some fish oil. If you need more vegetables in your life (who doesn't?), I've also started having a handful of spinach which I saute for a minute after the eggs are done. Sometimes I have salsa with scrambled eggs, and sometimes I add paprika or ground pepper. This whole routine takes no longer to prepare than my old breakfast, and I pack my lunch while my eggs are frying.

Pardon the cat.

On the weekend, I often make paleo pancakes or waffles. Both of these (receipes posted below) are big hits with non-paleo folk as well. I think the pancakes are better than the "regular kind" because I don't feel like I have to douse them in butter and syrup to enjoy them. The waffles are surprisingly spongey and every bit as delicious as the non-paleo kind. Bonus: they've got protein powder and 3 eggs apiece so they have 5 blocks of potein and will actually keep you full until lunch!

Paleo Protein Waffles

From "Giving Up Grains". This makes 2 waffles. I made the whole batch, ate 3/4 of one waffle, and heated up the rest in the toaster oven to supplement my breakfast for the rest of the week!

Ingredients
1/4 cup coconut flour
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder
6 eggs
2 tbs honey
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbs natural organic apple sauce (do not leave this out or they will be very dry!)
4 tbs ghee, melted (I use coconut oil)

Heat up your waffle iron. If you don't have one, it's totally worth buying! Whisk everything together. I melted the coconut oil first, but make sure you wait for it to cool because the first time I did not and it started to cook my eggs when I poured it in! The batter is a bit lumpy and strange in consistency, but I promise this does not affect deliciousness. My iron has an automatic shut off when it's done, but it's about 5 minutes. As topping I heat up some frozen berries in a saucepan with a bit of honey.


Paleo "Cereal"

You can put all sorts of things in this but here's a list of what I often add.

A spoonfull of berries, frozen (and then thawed) in the winter, fresh in the summer
Sliced banana
1/2 scoop of protein powder
A handful of coconut (toasted in the toaster oven!)
Walnuts (also toasted)
chia seeds
flax seeds

Then I mix the whole thing up with either almond milk (unsweetened!) or coconut milk beverage. Both are much cheaper at costco than at any grocery store I've seen.


Paleo Pancakes

I'm not sure where I found this recipe originally, perhaps Mark's Daily Apple blog.

Ingredients (per person)
1 ripe (or frozen) banana
BIG scoop of almond butter
1 egg
Cinnamon to taste
(you can add almond flour to thicken the batter, and I've also added a bit of protein powder).

Thaw the banana, if it's frozen, and smash it up. Whisk everything together. Fry in ghee or coconut oil. I find they take much longer than ordinary pancakes, so don't put them on too high or the outside will burn before the inside is cooked enough. Serve with berries (or syrup, if you like that sort of thing), and some blueberry breakfast sausage (way better than they sound) from Beach Road Meats on Locke St.


Egg Muffins

If you need something quick for hurried mornings, I sometimes make up some egg muffins ahead of time on the weekend. There are a million versions on the interweb (like here), but in short, you wisk up your eggs, add whatever you want in terms of finely chopped veggies (peppers, onions, spinach, etc) and meat (precooked: ham, sausage, etc), and bake in muffin tins on about 350 for 20-30 minutes. They tend to deflate a little like a souffle, but they're tasty (think mini quiche!) and can be kept in the freezer, then heated up in the toaster oven or microwave once you get to work!

New Year's Life Resolution: Practice stuff you suck at

New Year's resolutions.

I hate them. You're all gung ho about whatever it is you intend to do better this time around. You set ridiculous lofty goals and have such high expectations of yourself that the February Fail is inevitable and all you've managed is to feel crappy about yourself.

Which brings me to one of my favourite things about CrossFit. I don't need a resolution to motivate me to go! From the awesome people I get to hang out with, to the hit of seratonin after a killer WOD, to the real, tangible results, I'm addicted; CrossFit has fascilitated a complete life overhaul for me. But, there's always room for improvement. So this year, instead of New Year's resolutions, I'm starting a list of Life Resolutions: small, achievable but significant and lasting changes that I think I can make every day.

NEW LIFE RESOLUTION #1: Practice Stuff You Suck At

This one has obvious implications in the gym, but can be applied to any aspect of your life.

Practice stuff you suck at....
...in the gym
Coach Jen tells us this all the time, but it's advice I want to try to follow more often. The first step, I noticed, is to recognize that when I say I hate something (*cough* Burpees), I probably really mean that I'm just not very good at it, and therefore do not enjoy doing it. So, I resolve to do more of those things I hate, until I do not hate them any longer. For instance, by attempting strict pullups every time I found myself standing around (in between each heavy lifting set), I was able to finally get my frist strict pullup after a month or so. Sometimes a more concentrated effort is required, like a full 17 minutes of attempting toes to bar at a certain Crossfit Games Open last year (I only got 2 reps in that time, but the next time I tried I got 5!)

Practice stuff you suck at...
...in the kitchen
All those people you know who are great cooks had to start somewhere! The more recipes you try, the longer the list of meals in your repertoire. And while you're accumulating meal options, you're also learning what flavours work together, discovering new ingredients, and becoming more efficient at the whole process. A few tweaks and suddently you've invented your very own recipe!

Practice stuff you suck at...
...in your mouth?
Er...that is, practice eating more healthfully...

Changing how you eat is very much a mental challenge. You're constantly fighting cravings, habbits, and often laziness (cooking is sometimes difficult when you barely have time in the day to chew your food, let alone make it!). The good news is that the brain is plastic, and it can actually be trained to want healthier foods!

I discovered the truth of this as I progressed through the 10 week challenge. I found that the more greens I ate (collard, kale, and the dreaded broccoli), the less horrible they seemed. Partly because I learned how to cook them without turning them into a squishy mess, but also because my palette has changed completely so that I'm enjoying things I used to hate. I've also noticed that I'm more aware of the flavours in food. Since I eat so much less sugar, for example, fruit tastes sweeter and is more satisfying as a dessert, and I only need a small dab of honey with my hot cocoa (and milk chocolate tastes way too sweet).

A while ago I was watching Biggest Loser on TV (Hi, my name is Jen, and I'm addicted to Biggest Loser) and they had a guest (Dr. David Linden, a neuroscientist and author of The Compass of Pleasure) who shared some really nifty research about brain plasticity and cravings. He explained that the pleasure center responds differently for different people. When an obese and a lean person smell a cheeseburger, the obese person will have a much larger pleasure response (chemically in the brain) than the lean person (thus, they want the cheeseburger more badly). BUT, give both people a cheeseburger to eat, and the lean person will have a much larger pleasure response than the obese person, who will have to eat far more just to feel as good. But it is possible, he said, to rewire our brains with healthful eating in a few weeks or a few months. He did warn though that it only takes a week or so of crappy eating to undo all the re-wiring, so maybe only cheat for part of your vacation, and not the whole time!!

Dr. Linden also shared the trick of eating mindfully (pay attention to what you're eating). If your pleasure center is distracted while you eat by something like a TV show, he says, you're likely to eat more in order to feel satisfied. Maybe that's why I always end up finishing the bag of popcorn at the movie theatre without noticing :S

For when there's nothing in your cupboard but a can of tuna...

That's what happened to me today. I got home from work to discover that I'd forgotten to take a meat out of the freezer, I had used up all of my eggs for breakfast, and I was feeling too impatient to wait for something to thaw. But there were two cans of tuna in my cupboard! Below is the dinner provided by the internet, along with a couple other google discoveries.

Zingy Tuna Salad

Recipe here from PALEOdISH. It was pretty darn tasty for lacking mayonaise! Someone in the comments suggests adding smooshed avocado for creamy texture, but mine wasn't ripe enough to try. I served it on a couple slices of toasted Paleo bread and it was almost like I was eating a tuna melt. I'm really not certain I can give up cheese for life....


Turnip Fritters

I found this recipe (from Paleo Foodie) when I decided it was time to use up the turnips sitting at the bottom of my veggie drawer, like they always do when I get them in my veggie box, because turnips are gross (acceptable ways to eat turnip include disguising them in a stew where they don't really taste like turnips. NON acceptable ways include mashing them up and putting them next to the bowl of mashed potatoes so that 12 year old Jen takes a heaping scoop of mashed turnip and is then forced to eat it so as not to be wasteful).

Aaaanyway, the ginger and raisins cover up the turnip grossness quite nicely. They have a hashbrown texture (but bonus: vegetable!), and I even heated some up in the toaster oven for breakfast the next day. If you're fancy, you can even grate your turnips with a mondolin, like I did, because my manfriend decided I was hopeless at choping things and bought me a mandolin. I'm not normally one for gatgets, but this one is pretty great.


Paleo Pecan Brittle

This last recipe I found when I had a craving for peanut brittle. It's not at all like peanut brittle, but satisfies the sugary roasted nut desires. They're super fast to make (plus half hour baking time), and I just made a batch to take to a family Christmas dinner this weekend. Bonus: my house now smells like cinnamon toast crunch.

I have also hired Ashley to make me her awesome paleo brownies so that I have a variety of desserts with which to avoid cheating. Speaking of not cheating, I realized last week that I can make stuffing with Elana's paleo bread!!! AMAZING! Well, I hope it will be. I'm going home Friday night so mom can show me how to make her worlds best stuffing. Stay tuned.


That awesome pumpkin spice bread that Jocelyn made for the Halloween potluck

It's awesome. 'Nuff said. I've linked the recipe from Primal Palate so as not to have to search in the CrossFit Altitude archives every time.


Protein balls etc

Speaking of Ashley, this is the original protein ball recipe (and posted below for convenience). The ones at the front of the gym are modified by paleo pastry chef extrodanaire (Ashley B) and, frankly, are much better than the ones I haphazardly mush together for myself. Mmmmm mocha tasty balls.

1/2 cup of nut butter (cashew, almond)
2 tablespoon of raw honey
2 tablespoon of cocoa nibs
2 tablespoon of shredded coconut
3/4 cup of protein powder ( natural, not sweetened)
1 teaspoon organic, alcohol free vanilla
2 tablespoon crushed nuts (raw almonds)

Mix nut butter, protein powder, honey and vanilla until smooth. Then add remainder of ingredients. Rill into 1 inch balls and place in an airtight container in the fridge for storage.

For when you get a little tired of that particular protein snack, which I did after my 5th batch, I tried these goji protein bars. They're quite tasty (less sweet, more nutty and seedy), but they're a bit crumbly. Perhaps an extra egg? I also soaked my goji berries in boiling water for a few minutes to soften them.

And now for something completely different....

So this is completely unrelated to fitness or nutrition but I just couldn't resist because mussels are so awesome.

I'm a mathy by trade who accidentally ended up working in the field of biology. So the best part of my job is I get to constantly learn new things about neat-o critters. It's like when you're watching David Attenborough in Planet Earth and he's all excited about the Tibetan Fox with the square head, or in Life, there's that Pebble Toad that throws itself down cliffsides like a bouncy ball. Oh! Or that fungus that infects insects so that they go mental and crawl to the highest spot they can so, that when their head explodes with fungus spores it will infect more of the colony, but if the other ants see the infected ant acting strangely they carry him away forthwith so his exploding spore head won't destroy them all. If you haven't watched David Attenborough narrate a BBC special about the awesome things nature comes up with, go do that now. Start with the birds of paradise, whose mating dances are even more hillarious than some humans I know.

Back? So, mussels. Not as cool as the crazy-making fungus, but still neat. I'm not talking about the dreaded zebra mussel, I'm talking about all of the native mussels who have been ousted from the Great Lakes by zebra mussels, many of which are endangered. These guys have a parasitic phase as larvae where they hang out on a fish host for a few weeks before they metamorphose into juvenile mussels, being ever so handily dispersed to wherever the host fish has swam in that time.

But how do they got onto the fish? I'm glad you asked! Some mussels just spew thir larvae into the water and hope for the best, but the cool ones have lures that look like fish food that they wave around, spewing the larvae (called glochidia!) when the fish gets near. EDIT: just found an awesome youtube video of some lures

Picture stolen from Dr. Zanatta's website.

The SUPER AWESOME BADASS mussels take it a step futher and actually grab onto the fish's head for maximum glochidia attachage.

But the real reason I was compelled to share all of this is because of the mussel species I'm currently modelling, the Mudpuppy mussel. It uses the Mudpuppy as a host (you don't say!), which of course I had to look up because we did not cover this in any of my math courses, nor was it mentioned in my one undergraduate biology course.

And I found this:

Picture stolen from this lady

If a reindeer with a dragon great grandmother mated with a puppy and had a mutant amphibian child, this is what it would look like. I want one.

If you came here looking for a recipe, this mussel dish looks tasty, although I haven't tried it. Just don't eat my endangered mussels please, you'll mess up my numbers :P

Tim Lim's Tasty Every Time Burgers. And a Bowl of Vegetables.

Tim made these most excellent burgers for a Paleo potluck last summer. Actually, he prepared the beef for the burgers, which somehow never got cooked over the course of the party. Those of us who deemed ourselves too full of wine to go home benefited enormously from this lapse the next morning. Burgers, salsa and scrambled eggs: Breakfast of Champions, I tell you.

Imagine my happiness to discover that these gourmet delicacies are super simple! This is now my standard burger recipe, and it's all thanks to Tim Lim. He told me I didn't have to give him credit, but it's too late, Tim. You're in the title now, and there's nothing you can do about it. :)

I topped this particular burger with my first attempt at guacamole. It is only very lightly spiced, and therefore would not be Tim Lim approved. I ate it with my standby bowl of vegetables.

Tim Lim's Tasty Every Time Burgers

Ingredients
1 or 2 eggs per lb of beef
hot sauce (I use tabasco)
Wheat free Tamari (a fermented soy sauce that Mark's Daily Apple says is ok...some people use coconut aminos instead but I have yet to try them)
salt and pepper to taste

Squish it all together (you know you want to use your hands) and grill/fry. Top with salsa, guacamole, mustard...all that good non-bun stuff. When I next have my planning hat on, I intend to try portabello mushrooms as a bun....

Not-as-hot-as-Tim's Guacamole

Ingredients
1 ripe avocado
1 small tomato
a bit of hot sauce
lime and/or lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Extract your avacado from its casing and smoosh it all up with a fork.
2. Dice the tomato and add it in.
3. Add a few shakes of hot sauce, several more shakes of lime juice, and some salt and pepper until it tastes good.
(I added a bit of cumin. Don't do that, it wasn't good, I had to drown the cumin flavour with more lime)

Bowl of Vegetables

Ingredients
Vegetables
Oil and Balsamic vinegar

I realized very early on in the Paleo challenge that I get really bored of chewing on lettuce, and that I was using the lettuce more as a vehicle for all the more substantial stuff. So one day, I just left the lettuce out. I felt so free! This is an extra easy side when you come home from a WOD and can't imagine mustering the effort to cook a vegetable to go with your slab of meat.

My standard vegetables to have on had for this purpose are:
Bell Peppers
Cucumber
Radishes
Mushrooms

I dice up the veggies, top with some grated beats, and dress with ground pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. I don't even mix the dressing together before I add it, because I'm kind of lazy, but it all works out.

Tangy Orange Chicken

I stole the idea for this sauce from Ashley B's thanksgiving cranberry sauce. Mine is more orange and less cranberry so the effect is totally different. It's just the right amount of tart and sweet, and satisfies the craving for orange chicken from Manchu Wok. Crazy thought....would lemon juice instead of orange juice somehow make me some lemon chicken? I miss lemon chicken. Filing that idea for later.

The dish pictured below is the second iteration of this recipe, tried with pork instead of chicken. There weren't any fresh cranberries so I used dried. It was still tasty (although not quite as awesome), and slightly less paleo for the sugar in the dried fruit. Alas. I ate it with roasted sweet potato chips, which is my favourite side dish, and is good for when you're a bit too hungry to be totally satisfied by meat and greens. The first time I also made kale, which would have made the picture less ORANGE, but I was lazy this time. And I didn't have any Kale.

Orange Chicken

Ingredients
~1/2 can of orange juice concentrate, unsweetened (I'm quite sure actual orange juice or freshly squeezed oranges would be as good if not better)
- cranberries (fresh if you can, dried works too)
- 1 or 2 apples, peeled and diced
- boneless chicken breasts (or porkchops)

1. Heat the orange juice (diluted with equal parts water), cranberries, and diced apple in a pan that's large enough for your meat to fit in as well, and let simmer.
2. Sear the chicken in some olive oil in a separate pan. I have no idea if this is necessary, but I did this with the intention of keeping the juices in. The chicken was very juicy, perhaps the searing was responsible.
3. Add the chicken to the pan with the sauce and cover. I flipped the chicken repeatedly to cook both sides and to keep the top from drying out.

The time needed will depend on how thick your meat is. The chicken took probably 30 minutes or so, and the thinner porkchops were quicker. You're done when the meat is cooked, and the apples and cranberries are all squishy. The first time, the sauce reduced too much before the chicken was done, so I added more water as needed. The second time the pork cooked before the sauce was reduced, so I will reduce the sauce a bit more before adding the pork next time.

Roasted Sweet Potato Chips

1. Thinly slice a sweet potato. You can peel it but I never bother (although I do remove any sprouting roots or funky looking spots!).
2. Spread out on a cookie tray, and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil.
3. Season with sea salt and cracked pepper. Sometimes I also use garlic powder, and once I even used ginger!
4. Bake for about 20 minutes, flipping half way. If the potatoes are cooked but still too squishy, broil for a few minutes to crisp. I bake them until the thinnest parts start to burn.

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.

Lemon Cranberry Cabbage Salad

Pictured here alongside my Kentucky Fried Haddock, this is my go-to paleo potluck dish. It's got a certain tang to it that I love, and it always seems to go over well. I've put it in rotation as one of my regular side dishes, although I use "rotation" losely because once you buy the cabbage, and if you live alone like I do, you end up eating cabbage salad for about a week straight, after which it takes a while for you to desire cabbage again...I'm really selling this one aren't I...I swear it's delicious. Sorry again about the vague measurement system, but really it's all to taste. Some day I'll put the stuff in a spoon before I put it in the salad so I can report proper ratios.

Lemon Cranberry Cabbage Salad

Ingredients
Chopped cabbage
Lemon juice (a lot)
Cider vinigar (some)
Olive oil (just a little)
Salt and pepper to taste
Dried cranberries
Seeds of some description for texture(I usually use flax and sunflower)

Mix all of the above together in a bowl. Let it sit for a minute or two, then taste test your cider to vinigar ratio. Add extra dressing ingredients as needed. Be sure to let the juices soak in before taste testing. Sometimes by the time I get the ratio right I end up with too much juice pooled at the bottom, in which case i just drain it off (otherwise you'll end up with some seriously lemony bites at the end).

I've also tried it with currents instead of cranberries, which is also yummy and less sugary, but also less flavourful. Which reminds me, be warned that the dried cranberries usually have sugar in them, so not strictly paleo. I hear legends of dried cranberries sweetened with apple juice at Whole Foods, but as I rarely have occasion to venture to Oakville I have not investigated these claims.

WARNING: The salad does not keep well, so don't make leftovers (or don't make it too far in advance of your potluck!). There's some sort of weird slimey-fication process that makes it much less excellent the next day. It's pretty quick to make though, so I often whip up a container in the morning to take to work for lunch.

Banana Macaroon Pie

I've hated bananas for as long as I can remember. The texture really grosses me out (and also Mom says I had some sort of banana related incident as a child). But since bananas are a very convenient snack (they come in their own container!), and work so well in smoothies, I decided to give them another try. As I'm finding with many things that I've previously resisted due to unpleasant texture (like broccoli...it's fuzzy...) if you disguise it at first, you can make it edible (often with bacon), and eventually you even get used to it. Recently, I've embraced the banana, and it has become a part of my new favourite dessert:

Banana Sundae(ish)

Sliced banana (1/2 to 1 whole, hunger dependent), drizzled with almond butter and a bit of honey, and sprinkled with cocoa nibs.

The day after inventing this banana camouflage (and just one week into the 10 week paleo challenge), I was confronted with an invitation to a birthday dinner involving double chocolate cake. Keeping in mind my "plan to not cheat" motto I decided to make my own dessert to bring along. My manfriend suggested I make something to share, and proposed that I make my banana sundae into a pie to "make it look less healthy so that other people will try it". Google found me this recipe, which I modified (ditched the strawberries and replaced the crust with something chocolatey) to create the masterpiece below.

Banana Macaroon Pie

Crust
3/4 cup blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
1/4 cup cocoa
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted over low heat
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
2 ripe bananas

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs, beaten

2/3 c. coconut milk
honey and cocoa nibs for the top


The crust is modified from Elana's Gluten-free Almond Flour cookbook. Her crusts are all variations on a theme. I adjusted her coconut pie crust to make it chocolatey, although I think I would put a bit more coconut/almond flour and a bit less cocoa next time.
1. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl, whisk the wet in another bowl, and stir the wet into the dry.
2. Press into a 9 1/2" pie pan.
3.(?) I then baked it at 350 for 10 minutes (without the filling), but realized afterward that this was probably unnecessary; Alana's crust recipe was for a pie with chilled filling (and thus needed separate baking), and the original banana pie recipe did not pre-bake the crust. Thus, the top edges were a little crispy, so I'll try without pre-baking next time (there's nothing in it that really needs baking anyway).

4. Mix bananas, lemon juice, and vanilla extract either in a food processor or by hand (you’ll need to mash the bananas first if you mix by hand). Then gently mix in coconut milk and eggs.
3. Pour banana filling into pie crust.
4. Bake at 180 C for 35 minutes, or until set in center. Let pie cool.
5. Drizzle honey and sprinkle cocoa nibs on top (or stick with the strawberries and blueberries suggested in the original recipe).

Note: other people actually ate it, and took a second slice for later!

Plan to Cheat (or Not to Cheat)

Most of the year I keep my treats to a minimum: the storebought stuff isn't worth it, and home made stuff is infrequent enough that indulgences don't get out of hand. But from Thanksgiving until the guilt sets in somewhere around January 3rd, Festivus plates o' plenty abound, and while it's one thing to simply avoid having these things in your house, it's quite another to resist the plethora of tasties that show up in the lunchroom, or get passed around at parties. There are two contrasting strategies that I have found work best (for me) for resisting temptations.

1. Planning to NOT cheat

If you're heading to a function where you know you will be tempted, make a paleo treat to bring along and share (option: hide a couple of paleo brownies in your purse, and don't share).

One week into the 10 week challenge I was invited to a birthday dinner for my manfriend's brother. Knowing I wouldn't want to cheat so soon, he warned me that his mom was making double chocolate cake. So, I baked a Banana Macaroon Pie to take with me, and found I didn't even miss the cake! Option: Hire Ashley to make you her They-actually-taste-like-real-brownies Paleo Brownies, which is what I plan to do for my family Christmas shindig in a few weeks.

2. Planning to cheat

I know this is counterintuitive, but what's the point in all of the burpees and overhead walking lunges if you don't enjoy life a little too! And besides, I find that if I'm constantly trying to resist cravings, I'll try to fill them with semi-healthy and unsatisfying substitutes, and end up eating more than if I'd just eaten the small piece of chocolate I wanted in the first place!

To control the frequency of these indulgences, I try to plan my extra special treats ahead of time; if I know I've got a trip to the Bean Bar coming up in two weeks, it's much easier to stay on track in the meantime. Last weekend, for instance, we went on a Taste the Season wine tour in Niagara on the Lake, where wine was paired with not-so-paleo foods (zero paleo challenge points for me that day... and I would do it again!). Having allowed myself to partake guilt free, it was easy to eat well leading up to the tour, and I feel confident that I will be able to remain wheat-free all the way until Christmas (where my mom's stuffing and my sister's apple crisp await!). If you still need some convincing, Mark's Daily Apple fully supports a little wine and dark chocolate!


While these strategies are somewhat opposing, the common thread is to plan ahead. Decide before you get to the party whether you will cheat or not. Mind you, it doesn't always work (I had a bit of an indiscretion at a Halloween party with a bag of All Dressed chips), but the success rate is certainly higher than if you try to make rational decisions when the gingerbread man is looking at you seductively with a "come hither" expression. That reminds me, these are on my "to try" list.

Anyone else have tricks to share for resisting those glutenous delights?

EDIT:
As I was writing this, Mark (of the Daily Apple) was writing this about "gateway foods" that tempt us during the holidays. There's even a link at the bottom to a post on how to politely decline a dessert!

"With the holidays coming, I always suggest folks think about how they’re going to enjoy it Primally – especially if this is your first holiday season since going Primal. Think about each event and how you’ll handle it – what you’ll eat and what you won’t."

Kentucky Fried Haddock

Today something awesome happened. I accidentally discovered the secret recipe for KFC's chicken batter (ish).

This is awesome because once every year or so I crave that flavour so badly that I forget how horrid the meal makes me feel, and I stop at KFC. And then I feel horrid, and spend another year gagging at the thought of repeating the process.

But no more, friends! The most excellent discovery began when I found this recipe last week when I was having a childhood craving for Shake 'n Bake. I successfully shaked and baked my porkchop, although I didn't have the fancy "Nature's Seasons" spice, and the salt and pepper alone wasn't quite enough. Also, just to note, I did not grid my own almond flour, I went to the bulk store and bought a bag that someone else had already ground for me. I'm really not quite there yet...

Today, I decided to try the recipe again, this time "breading" (really, it's "almonding") my haddock. And when I tasted it, I could have sworn I was eating KFC....except with fish instead of chicken, obviously. But I expect it would work just as well on chicken or pork. Seriously, if you, like me, suffer from occasional inappropriate KFC cravings, you have to try this. Look, I was so excited I took a picture of my partially devoured meal.

...I really need a better camera, other paleo recipe blogs have much more professional looking visual aids.

Anyway, I ate it with my Lemon Cranberry Cabbage Salad (also pictured) that is my go-to paleo potluck dish, and which is in my side dish rotation along with "Salad Without the Lettuce" (or: a Big Bowl of Veggies).

Kentucky Fried insert meat (Paleo KFC)

Ingredients
Almond flour
1 whisked egg
Sea salt and pepper (I think I used 6-8 cranks of the grinder each)
A pinch of cumin
several shakes of chili powder
Haddock, or any sort of meat (I think)

(sorry about the imprecise measurements, I just sort of guess how much will taste good...)

1. Mix up the flour, salt/pepper, cumin, and chili powder in a soup bowl type dish that your meat can fit in.
2. Whisk the egg in a similar dish.
3. Dip your meat in the egg to coat on both sides, and then coat in the batter mixture.
4. Pan fry in some olive oil. I cooked the haddock (both sides) until it fell apart when I tried to flip it.

There's something delicious in your fridge

(....or, notes on being more creative in the kitchen)

I was not a creative cook. But, along the way, I've collected some tricks for mixing it up a bit.

1. Consider signing up for a weekly box of fresh veggies.

I think this is what helped me start to be more creative. My roomate at the time and I signed up for Plan B Organics (yes, the name is unfortunate). It's a community supported agriculture program where you basically buy shares in a farm. You commit up front to pay for all of your veggies for the season, and you get locally grown, organic deliciousness delivered to your nearest depot weekly (or bi weekly). This results in a forced creativity, becuase you have to figure out something to do with what you get before it goes bad! Which leads to number 2.

2. Google an ingredient

In a veggie box last summer I got Rhubarb, which I'd never cooked before. The only things I'd ever had rhubarb in were pies, and I wasn't quite at the point of baking pies yet. I googled rhubarb recipes on the The Foodee, which posts a paleo meal every day, and found "Pork chops with cherry rhubarb chutney". I subbed dried cranberries for the cherries, because that's what was in my cupboard. Subbing things leads us to number 3.

3. Change an old recipe

My friend Caitlin came to visit and I hadn't planned dinner for us. I had in my fridge 1/2 bag of fresh cranberries, and recalled that Ashley had made a delicious cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving with orange juice and apples. So we picked up the missing ingredients, some chicken, and some veggies for a side, and managed to make a delicious Orange Chicken dinner.

4. Look in the fridge

If I'm super organized I look in the fridge BEFORE I leave the house, find a recipe, and pick up all the necessary ingredients on the way home. I am often not organized. I got home last night to find all I had to eat was a spaghetti squash and some ground beef. By itself, that would have been a bit boring, but with a little bit of simmering and spices, it was just as delicious as any spaghetti with meat sauce I've ever had. In fact, it was so flavourful that I didn't miss my usual parmesan.

5. Simmering and Spices

This, I have found, drastically improves any sauce or meat dish. If you're more into planning than I am, you probably do the marinade thing. But in lieu of this, don't be afraid of spices. Spices dressed up my Spaghetti(squash) and Meat Sauce, and you can also make a pretty tasty rub for your fish with paprika, chili powder, garlic powder, salt/pepper, and cumin (my favourite), or whatever you want. Plus, spices are super packed with minerals and stuff that we need (like iron). Bonus!

6. Sometimes experiments go bad

...and then you have mediocre dinner, and mediocre leftovers for lunch the next day. Bummer. But "real" chefs try recipes dozens of times before it's perfect, so that makes me feel better. I started with the low expectation of making something that "doesn't suck". But I'm finding that the failed experiments are much less frequent than the "pretty yummy" and "delcious" ones, and they're rarely inedible.

Once I made one or two yummy dishes I started to consider myself to be "someone who can cook", and that sort of gave me the mental permission to be more creative and daring, which lead to more delicious things. Unless you burn everything you touch, you can cook by definition, so dont' be afraid to try something new!

Sometimes, you just need a piece of toast

When I started crossfit I didn't jump on the paleo bandwagon straight away. I started gradually reducing my wheat consumption in lunches and dinners, but I was still very much addicted to my morning bagel with peanut butter. I had been eating either toast or a bagel for breakfast every day of my life, it was hard to imagine anything different.

Last Christmas I did something drastic and decided to only have a bagel every other day. Breakfast has always seemed to me like the hardest meal to change; it's much easier to get moving in the morning if you just carry on with your regular routine on autopilot, so it takes some directed effort and perhaps planning to do something different.

Anyway, in order to give up morning toast EVERY DAY for the current 10 week paleo challenge I'm attempting now, I decided it was time to find an alternative. I tried making this bread first, because it was the only paleo bread recipe I could find that actually looked fluffy. Most of them look more like banana bread in density, which just won't do for toast. It one didn't work for me, in short. It didn't rise at all and so was hardly wide enough to spread nut butter on.

My next attempt was much more successful. The recipe is from Elana's Pantry, which has a slew of gluten free goodies that appear to be mostly paleo friendly. I didn't have the tiny pan she recommended (I got mine from Fortinos), so my slices are more the shape of malba toast. Mine also has brown flecks because Fortinos has only flax meal instead of golden flax meal.

I love this bread. It's light and fluffly like proper bread, and even tastes like it's buttered already! It's good with nut butter, or all by itself. It also doesn't take very long to make at all. I mixed the ingredients while my spaghetti squash was roasting, and baked it while I ate the spaghetti squash (with ground beef, simmered for a while in diced tomato with garlic, salt and pepper, tamari, and lots of paprika and chili powder...delicious!). I have also successfully eaten this bread toasted with an egg, tomato, and bacon, and it did not fall apart, although it's a bit incorrectly shaped...unless you have a rectangular egg pan...

EDIT: It looks much better with golden flax meal, as prescribed, and I think it tastes even better too.

Paleo Bread
Ingredients
1 ½ cups blanched almond flour
2 tablespoons coconut flour
¼ cup golden flaxseed meal
¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
5 eggs
¼ cup coconut oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1. Place almond flour, coconut flour, flax, salt and baking soda in a food processor (or a bowl)
2. Pulse ingredients together (or stir with a fork)
3. Pulse in eggs, oil, honey and vinegar
4. Pour batter into a greased 7.5" x 3.5" Magic Line Loaf Pan
5. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes
6. Cool and serve

Who are you, and what have you done with Jen Young.....

If you suggested a year ago that I would be baking bread, making pies, and eating bananas and broccoli, I would have suggested you have your head examined. I had all sorts of excuses for why I didn't have the time to make my own food from scratch and, more importantly, I was unaware of information about the food that I was eating that might have provided some motivation to make the time.

Then, several changes took place in my life (some small, some rather enormous) that set me on the hiking trail that I'm navigating today. When I was a student at McMaster I started going to the campus gym, where I went regularly to classes lead by a wonderful instructor named Ruth. She ran a spin class, a step class, and a strength class back to back every Thursday (the heaviest weights were 15lbs, but she did her best and made us hold two at once for something resembling strength training). By the time I graduated I felt my fitness had actually improved (I could make it through all three classes on a good day). But then came the real (non student) world of expensive gym fees and monotonous classes that left me peddling on the eliptical 3 times a week. Not so much with the progress anymore.... I started to suspect a change was in order, but I had no idea what that might be.

Then, my dad died of a heart attack, and my gym routine felt so futile that I could hardly scrape together the motivation to go once a week. After several months of hazy funk, I remembered Christine B mentioning this Crossfit thing at work, and decided that change was definitely in order, and that perhaps this was the change I was looking for. Over a year later, I can say with sincerity that Altitude and the people there have not only changed my life, but my outlook on life as well.

So my fitness was back on track again, and through this new brand of fitness I was introduced to a new way of thinking about food. This coincided nicely with the decision to order a weekly box of organic, local vegetables to share with my roomate (more on that later). Slowly, I began to look for replacements and substitutions in my diet to bring me closer to the Paleo diet, and at the same time the veggie box was forcing me to be more creative with my meals (there were veggies I'd never even heard of, google was required). I also have this compulsive need to immediately research anything and everything that someone claims to be true (I blame math and its tidy proofs, I need that QED), and I directed this compulsion toward all things to do with food and the body.

Put all of these things together, and you end up with a person who went from frozen pizzas and Zoodles, to "one of those people who bakes and stuff". Weird. I still don't bake for fun; it isn't something that I wake up in the morning feeling excited about. But I certainly enjoy consuming the end product, and it somehow tastes better when I know exactly what's in it and what sort of fuel it will provide. There's also the basic satisfaction that you get from making something "all by yourself", and from sharing your culinary successes with others. (And when they declare your creation to be delicious, it's the adult equivalent of when your mom used to stick your artwork on the fridge)

So, the point of that unintentionally long-winded ramble was to introduce the intention behind this space. I consider(ed?) myself to be rather inexpert in the kitchen; I started out profoundly uncreative with my meals, and I have actually managed to screw up cookies made from a mix in the past. This isn't meant to be a place to share my "expert opinion". Instead, I plan to record the things that I'm learning from those I consider to be more expert than myself. In addition, I will share my attempts to become actively engaged in my own fitness, happiness, and all around health, and hope that anyone who happens across this space will do the same.

~Jen