Cooking up a storm

Yes, there were a ton of pics that went with this! I got so obsessed with photo editing,I  fell into the dark world of Instagram et al. Then I realized I was taking days to just out this post up, and then I thought- well, while photos are great, I am procrastinating. Screw the photos. They know what they did.  So here this is: light on photos. But it's HERE. VICTORY!!

I have been going crazy with the new addition to our family: The Vitamix. This blender has been on heavy rotation. I am having to curb my usual slovenly "I'll just soak it" excuse, and have made a rule with the VM AND the Cuisinart that I have to wash everything out immediately. While it's irritating at the time, it makes life a heck of a lot easier.

So far, the Vitamix has pulverized multiple smoothies, blended coconut ice cream, coconut milk, apricots (for apricot chicken on Monday night!) and probably other things I can't remember. My fridge is filled with tiny containers with colorful pureed masterpieces nestled within.

So I was pretty confident when I decided to roast two bags of sunflower seeds and frappe my way to homemade sunbutter.

One thing: making nut or seed butter with the VM is more challenging than just throwing the stuff in and hitting a button. My blender would go for fifteen or twenty seconds, and then the "emergency overheat" feature would kick in. If you think this is annoying: well, you would be right. I was beginning to think my new Precious was defective. But: BEHOLD!!! For future reference, this is the magical VitaMix nut butter procedure:

"You should always start the machine on variable #1 and very quickly increase the center dial to #10 and then immediately flip the left switch from variable to HIGH. This operation should only take 3 seconds. If you are running the recipe on the variable low settings as you are describing below the machine overheats at about 15-20 seconds and shuts down.

Try making the recipe with the appropriate settings and you will see that the appliance will produce the most awesome almond, peanut, pecan, and cashew butter. For best results you should you no less than 4 ½ cups of raw nuts and 3 tablespoons of oil. Additionally, please make sure that you are using the tamper. "

So it has been written. So it shall be done.

The kombucha is just sort of sitting in the cabinet, looking inscrutable and completely unchanged. I am not sure what I am waiting for....although signs of cultures forming will be nice. I am thinking that as experiments go, I am way too impatient, and not quite forgetful enough.

Last night was another cooking bonanza: I am out of my funk, but it's still hot here, so SG was assigned to make hamburgers outside on the grill, and I made Paleo Burger Buns, cranked out hand cut sweet potato fries, came up with a recipe for macadamia pesto pretty much on the fly (the one I linked is similar: I cut out the cheese and doubled the macadamias, as well as adding a little more olive oil to part of the batch to make it "drizzley"), and sliced up some veggies to go with.  My mandoline either needs to be sharpened, or it just doesn't like sweet potatoes, because trying to use the fry-slicing feature was a nightmare. I just ended up slicing them by hand.  I see now why frozen fries were such a popular convenience food.

This has been an interesting week, food-wise: I am spending a LOT of time on FastPaleo, which even has an app, and also discovered something I have been searching for forever: Eat Your Books. It's a fantastic resource for keeping track of recipes- I have so many Primal/Paleo cookbooks now, and can't for the life of me remember the source of recipes anymore. Was it on the web? Did I save it to Pinterest, and if so, to which board? If it's in a book, which book? I desperately wanted to make my cookbook collection searchable- by recipe title, or main ingredient, course, whatever. And this seems to be a really seamless way of doing all of that: it pulls indexes from books, magazines, and blogs, plus you can add your own recipes.  AND it seems to have indexes, cover photos, and info for all the recent Primal/Paleo cookbook offerings on the market. Wooohoo! I used a coupon code to get the first three months free. I tried a few codes before I found one that worked: if you want to try it out, you can send me an email here or PM me on Facebook (Maybe throw me a "like" on there, if you haven't already ;) and I'll hook you up. Cheers!

Betty Grokker

  I was worried when I began eating and living more Primally. Most women are a lot more averse to this lifestyle: the fear of fat is so ingrained. I am hesitant to bring up my new lifestyle, especially as I am not anywhere close to svelte, and I want to be a good example, and not be perceived as a horrible warning.

  People who know me well immediately register that I look happier and healthier, but I don't think I "look the part" enough to explain things to complete strangers, and I have a horror of getting all "evangelical" on people who just wish I would shut up about my weird caveman cult thing, already.

My first clue about how different eating Primally was: about a month in, I went to a baby shower, and (STUPID!!! STUPID!!!) didn't eat breakfast before we went. I couldn't drink the mimosas, obviously the bread basket wasn't an option: neither were the fondant-frosted cupcakes or the shower favors, which were full of jellybeans and personalized M&M's- adorable, but in my new life, inedible. When lunch finally came, it was a green salad with chicken breast and strawberries. I wolfed it down. Of course there was no fat to speak of, but I also suspect the salad dressing was laced with sugar. It didn't even dent my inner appetite- in fact, it only seemed to make me hungrier. My stomach growled all the way through the afternoon, through the pleasantries, through the games. I did win one of the games, and my prize was a Whatchamacallit candy bar. #$%&!

It was a good wake-up call: a lot of women eat like this, in the name of health, pretty much constantly. I know I did. And I was always hungry, cranky, and miserable, and somehow, still fat- even when I weighed my chicken and measured my low-cal dressing. I can't believe that I had forgotten that awful gnawing feeling over the course of the month. It was the first time that I realized that hunger like that between meals was not, in fact, normal. And I love knowing that I can eat a decent breakfast, and not worry about my blood sugar crashing through the floor at 10 AM.

That's something that the Primal Blueprint has restored to me: my love of cooking. When you're using fresh, unprocessed ingredients and not counting every calorie, it is so much easier to cook, and what you cook is just effortlessly delicious. I adore kitchen gadgets and time-saving measures, and I HATE doing the dishes, so I typically try to cook once a week for the rest of the week. That day, my friends, was today.

                                                      The Menu:

Mmmmm....chicken!

"Rotisserie Crockpot Chicken" from "A Year of Slow Cooking".This is a fantastic website, all gluten-free, so easily adapted to my needs- when recipes need adapting at all. This particular recipe has been made three times in the past two months at my house- it's a keeper. It's quick, idiot-proof, and also makes its own concentrated stock: even the breast meat comes out moist, not dry. If you've ever wanted to cook with chicken fat, the "schmaltz" this produces is divine.  Lord Grok is addicted to this, and I love that I have shredded chicken for salads and omelettes or what-have-you for the rest of the week.                                                          

Frittata completed, soup in progress.

Chicken Vegetable Soup: My own creation. Even here in sunny Cali, autumn is approaching. I usually make a huge batch of this, and freeze anywhere from 25% of it to half.  When we're sick or feeling lazy, it's like money in the bank. And since we're not sick as often around here, heating it up and bringing it to a sick friend makes me feel like Superwoman.  I'll post a more detailed recipe later, but it's chicken soup the old-fashioned way. With a little prep-help from good old Trader Joe's.

Lord Grok's lunch.

Taco Frittata: Another creation. The beauty of the frittata is that it uses up leftovers seamlessly, it's portable, simple, and it's endlessly adaptable. An easy equation: a large-ish oven-safe frying pan and fat to grease it. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Saute veggies (roasted peppers and onions)and protein (leftover taco meat) on stovetop. When cooked or heated through, pour beaten egg mixture (I used 8 eggs, 1/4 c. milk) over the top. When it's setting on the bottom but still jiggly on top, throw grated cheese on top and stick in the oven until the top looks solid when you jiggle the handle of the pan. Perfection.

It's amazing how I feel , knowing that we pretty much have the cooking out of the way for the week!