Creamy chicken avocado alfredo

I'm newly obsessed with the song "A Warrior's Call", by a Danish band called Volbeat. I've never heard of them before, but apparently they've been around since 2000 (says Wikipedia). Every time this song comes on the radio I feel a strong urge to get to the gym and lift/throw heavy things. My friend points out that while he wouldn't have thought of it on his own, it seems somehow fitting that the perfect crossfit anthem would be by a Scandinavian metal band. I'm going to have to add it to the request list for the Games workouts.

In other news, avocados are super! So versatile. When it was suggested to me that one could use them as a base for a creamy pasta sauce, I was sceptical, but it turned out to be delicious! The avocado somehow simulates the creaminess of a proper alfredo, it's marvelous. I cobbled together several internet-searched recipes and ended up with this pesto-alfredo hybrid. I ate mine over zucchini noodles but I think it would go well with spaghetti squash as well. Oh! OR perhaps as a cold salad with cucumbers and cherry tomatos...must try that.

Creamy chicken avocado alfredo
All of the sauce ingredients are to taste. I fail at measuring stuff. For the pesto I used my hand crank processor, which worked well. An electric one would have made it all smoother but I think I like the texture. This made enough for 2 meals.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts
Garlic/onion powder, salt and pepper, and olive oil for the chicken
3 small zucchinis (or enough for two servings of noodles) (or spaghetti squash)

For the sauce:
1 ripe avocado
a small handful of fresh spinach
basil (I would have used fresh but I only had dried)
a good squirt of lemon juice (2-3 tablespoons, roughly?)
a smaller squirt of lime juice
olive oil (maybe a tablespoon)
some crushed walnuts for texture (about 2 tablespoons)
1 clove of garlic, chopped or minced
salt to taste

1. Chop chicken into bite-sized pieces. Season with salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic, etc, and saute in some olive oil.
2. If you're making zucchini noodles, boil some water, and cook them for about a minute and drain. I normally just let my sauce cook them, but this sauce isn't heated.
3. Meanwile, dump all of the pesto/alfredo ingredients into a food processor and blend well. I may have accidentally knocked some parmesan cheese in there as well...
4. Toss the sauce with the chicken and noodles and enjoy!

Warning: the internet says not to heat the avocado sauce, so if you made enough for leftovers, set aside your sauce separately and reheat the chicken/noodles on their own.

Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken

I started out thinking I would make a creamy mushroom sauce for my chicken. But then I remembered I had some clementines threatening to shrivel, and no body wants to waste a good clementine (don't you hate when you pick one up that looks great on one side, just to find that it's covered in blue mold on the underside and threatening to contaminate the rest of the basket with its grossness?). So, I ditched the mushrooms, kept the creamy sauce part, and came up with this delightful concoction, if I do say so myself. It looks a little bland in colour because by the time I remembered about the red peppers I had planned to add, everything else was all ready. Also, I forgot the ginger, and felt the whole thing was slightly lacking, but I added it to my leftovers, and happily my lunch the next day was more complete. Ginger is always a good idea. Like bacon. Except bacon jelly beans, seriously, don't do it.

Spicy Citrus Coconut Chicken (with Cauliflower Rice)
This made 3 meals for me

Ingredients
1 can coconut milk
2 large chicken breasts
~ 3 tablespoons lime juice
~ 6 clementines (4 juiced, 2 for garnish)
~ 2 teaspoons chili flakes (more or less depending on your level of spiciness)
fresh ginger
a pinch of cumin (if you like that sort of thing)
1/2 head of cauliflower
leaks or onion
other veggies? (red bell peppers or snap peas, mayhaps?)

1. Sear the chicken breasts on both sides in olive/coconut oil for a couple of minutes and set aside.
2. Chop and saute the onion or leaks briefly. Also saute sliced peppers here, like I forgot to do.
3. Add coconut milk, ginger, lime juice, clementine juice, cumin (optional), salt to taste, and chili flakes. I recommend adding a small amount of the chili flakes at a time and taste testing, because the hotness seems to intensify as you go along. I put a bit too much for my liking.
4. Put the lid on and let simmer while you "rice the cauliflower" in your handy dandy hand crank food processor, or your electric one if you're one of those fancy folk.
5. I added my cauliflower to the sauce at this point to let it cook. Ashley tried this recipe after smelling my leftovers, and cooked hers a bit separately first with some chicken broth, then added it to the sauce at the end. Either way, the point is to get your cauliflower cooked somehow, so long as it ends up in the sauce at the end, because I've decided it's better that way.
6. Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces and add back into the sauce to finish cooking.
7. Add some clementine wedges, if you please, and serve! Ashley also added orange juice to her sauce concoction, by the way, and something else but I don't remember what....hm....oh well!

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.