Maine Boiled Dinner

This weekend was abnormally cold for Florida. I know everyone from up north is like boohoo but seriously...it was cold for down here. The wind was howlin and temperatures dropped into the 30s. The one cool this is that I got to wear my bright green pea coat from Old Navy I bought like a million years ago. I never get to bust that thing out.

Since it was like 60 below I decided to make a good ol' Maine boiled dinner. For those of you who don't already know..I'm from Maine. In Maine we like things that are cheap and can feed a lot of people. Also, the meal is usually cooked in a dutch oven or a crock-pot for the fancy folk (i.e beef stew with dumplings, Maine baked beans, etc). I usually side with the fancy folk and cook everything in the crock-pot. I don't have time to sit around all Sunday while my food is cooking in the dutch oven. Also, I feel uneasy leaving the house while the oven is on. I'm afraid some gas line will leak and my oven will blow up along with the rest of my apartment building. I don't even think we have gas but that's beyond the point.

So I cooked this mess in the crock-pot is what I'm trying to say. The ingredients and steps are pretty simple. I bought a half ham from Publix (with the bone still in it). Hams are confusing. I don't understand them. I mean are they already cooked or what? Come on people. Don't even get me started on corned beef. What's that all about? It looks like ham.

Anywho, by the looks of this ham..it wasn't cooked. It even had some fatty skin around it which made me feel rustic. I like to feel rustic when I'm making my food. My meat comes from Costco where it doesn't even look like it came from an animal. It's all nice and trimmed and in its own individualized vacuumed sealed bag. It may be just me but I doubt cavemen meat looked like this. Good thing I'm not a caveman. Whatever. 

Ingredients

1 halved ham (bone in)

4 peeled carrots cut in half (not split down the middle but snapped into 2 pieces, yeah?)

2 peeled sweet potatoes (chopped in half)

1 green cabbage quartered

1 tbsp Salt

2 tsp pepper

Steps

1. Place ham in the crockpot

2. Surround ham with your cut veggies

3. Pour 4 cups of water into the crockpot (water should come 3/4 quarters of the way up your meat/veggie mix)

4. Sprinkle your salt and pepper over everything

5. Cook on high for about 5 hours

6. If everything feels tender and the meat is falling apart turn the crock-pot off and let it sit until you're ready to eat

Late Nights

So sometimes I work hours that normal people work..but there is 1 day of the week I have to work til 9pm. Nobody likes their late night especially when you work in the ghetto. During the day it's safe..for the most part. Except for that one day when someone decided to shoot up the steak and shake next door. Does that scare me away from their milkshake happy hour? Never.

That's the chocolate covered strawberry milkshake if you were wondering. Definitely not paleo. It was a free gift from my boss which trumps the paleo card.

Back to my late night...

SO this is what I eat on my late night. Usually my glorious boyfriend has some meat thawing out in the sink for me but tonight I wanted eggs and ice cream. That's normal right? I like normal dinners. I'm a huge fan of scrambled eggs. I eat them at least once a day. Twice if it's my late night. Lemme show you a picture of my eggs.

I cheated...this is actually a picture of my daytime eggs..not my late night eggs. Did I deceive you? I hope not. Day time eggs and late night eggs are pretty much cooked the same way...with skill.

Main Ingredients
1 tsp coconut oil
3 large eggs
Splash of coconut milk (from the carton not the can)
salt and pepper

1. Set stove to low-ish heat (#3 or 4 on the stove)
2. After your pan has heated plop in your coconut oil
3. Scramble your eggs, milk, salt and pepper in a small bowl
4. Once the coconut oil has melted slowly pour your eggs in the warm pan
5. With a rubber spatula slowly scrape your eggs until they look creamy and smooth but not runny

These eggs will come out SO creamy you will think there is cheese in them or just undercooked. But I promise they aren't undercooked. They are absolutely perfect. Since it was dinner I thought it needed something extra so I put a dollop, yes a dollop, of guacamole on it. Brought it up to an 11. Enjoy!

Rosemary and Red Pepper Veggie Medley

These veggies were so much better the next day. The rosemary and the red pepper really do their thing to spice up the dish. I enjoyed eating these veggies while watching the most BIZARRE thing on my lunch break. 

Ok so the place I work is super weird. People are out of control unhealthy and they always collapse while at work. Our work isn't hardcore...we sit at desks all day. There really is no excuse to be passing out at work. Anywho. This chick decides to collapse outside. She was found half in her car/half out of her car. No idea what happened. The ambulance found her I guess and she was just laid out in her seat while everyone stared at her out the window. I don't ask questions..I just make up stories. Her story is that she went to her car on her lunch break...smoked a cigarette with the doors and windows closed up ..and nearly suffocated to death. So she decided to open her door and roll her body out onto the ground. Not sure if this is true...but this is what I'm making up and telling everyone. For all of you who have hearts and care...I believe the girl is fine. Thanks for making us all feel bad for laughing.

I hope you enjoy the veggies and think of people collapsing every time you eat them. I know I will.

Rosemary and Red Pepper Veggie Medley

1 zucchini

2 summer squash

2 handfuls of grape tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic (minced)

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp dried rosemary

salt/pepper to taste

1. On medium heat put your bacon fat in the pan to melt

2. Add all the veggies to the pan once the fat has melted

3. Cook veggies for 2 minutes and then add the minced garlic

4. Add salt/pepper, red pepper flakes, and rosemary

5. Cook veggies on medium heat until the grape tomatoes start to burst

6. Drop veggies down to low until the pork chops are done

Pork Chops in a Mustard Tarragon Sauce

Ok I have a confession to make. I haven't been eating 100% paleo. Huge surprise. Good thing paleo is a 80/20 lifestyle. I'm fairly close to the 80% during the day but I have night time sugar cravings. At night I usually like to eat ice cream, chocolate, anything that I baked that week. Last week I had a potluck and decided to try out a new recipe. I got this one from the interwebs. Usually I'm a number one fan of this girl's recipes but my marshmallow surprise was nothing special. No matter what I couldn't get rid of this dessert. No one would eat that mess. Even after I changed the name to marshmallow surprise it didn't excite people to try it. Marshmallow surprise isn't much of a surprise. I finally threw it out last night. I just couldn't keep trecking that crap all over the place trying to get people to eat it.

Anyways, after I threw it out I decided to make a healthy and super paleo dinner. Boneless pork chops in a mustard tarragon sauce. OMG so good. I'm usually not a huge tarragon fan. It reminds me of licorice tea for some reason. I don't know why..who knows. When tarragon is cooked in a mustard cream sauce it turns amazing. For the veggie side I cooked up some zucchini, yellow squash, and grape tomatoes with some minced garlic, rosemary and red pepper. Of course both the pork chops and veggies were cooked in leftover bacon fat. I prefer cooking everything in either coconut oil or bacon fat. When I'm feeling zesty I use the bacon fat. Maybe it's because I don't strain my leftover bacon fat so I end up getting little bits of bacon bits in the fat. I could just eat it with a spoon. I won't though...that may be a bit intense.

When you do make the veggies be sure to add the rosemary and red pepper. It's easy to forget those 2 ingredients but I promise you it really makes it. I love the little bit of heat the red pepper adds and rosemary has such an earthy delicious taste. Sometimes it reminds me of Thanksgiving. No idea why, it just does. Below is the picture of the pork chops. The picture took me forever to take because it kept looking all bright and overexposed. Also, the meat juices started to run and that was driving me crazy during the picture taking process. Meat juices.

Pork Chops in a Mustard Tarragon Sauce

3-4 Pork Chops (boneless)

1 tsp bacon fat

salt/pepper

1/4 cup white whine

2 tbls dijon mustard

1 tsp tarragon 

1/2 cup coconut milk

1. On medium heat plop some bacon fat in your pan

2. Salt and pepper your raw pork chops before putting them in the pan

3. Cook chops about 4ish minutes on each side

4. Remove chops from the pan and place on a plate

5. Pour white wine in the hot pan and scrape up all the good bits

6. Add your Dijon mustard, tarragon, and coconut milk and stir all together

7. Add the pork chops back into the sauce

8. Cover pan and simmer for 2 minutes

9. Remove chops and spoon delicious mustard tarragon sauce over the chops

Rosemary and Red Pepper Veggie Medley

1 zucchini

2 summer squash

2 handfuls of grape tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic (minced)

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tsp dried rosemary

salt/pepper to taste

1. On medium heat put your bacon fat in the pan to melt

2. Add all the veggies to the pan once the fat has melted

3. Cook veggies for 2 minutes and then add the minced garlic

4. Add salt/pepper, red pepper flakes, and rosemary

5. Cook veggies on medium heat until the grape tomatoes start to burst

6. Drop veggies down to low until the pork chops are done

Huevos Rancheros

Hello everyone!! I'm back from the weekend. Alive and moving..barely. I ran a half marathon on Saturday without training. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. I was able to finish but the rest of the day was shot. I couldn't move. My friend Jen gave me one of those bean packs that you heat up in the microwave and put on your muscles. I nearly scalded my skin off trying to sooth my muscles. It was excruciating.

So what I have learned from my experience is that you shouldn't run a half marathon without training first and that crossfit is better than everything ever invented. The end.

Also the superbowl was last night. Obvi I ate a ton of tortilla chips. Also! My friend Jen and I made these stupid good dessert quesadillas from this blog. I'm not huge on quesadillas but this dessert quesadilla was dang good. These were definitely not paleo so don't hate me. If you are going to have a "cheat" please try these out. What you do is cover the tortillas with butter and cinnamon sugar. Then in between the two tortillas you spread peanut butter, cinnamon sugar, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, and honey. Then you cook them in a pan or a handy dandy quesadilla maker. Which Jen has because she's awesome. It even cooks little cactus shapes into your quesadilla.

Since I ate like crap last night I decided to have a very paleo breakfast. I took some of that leftover mustard chicken and kale (yeah I know it's a little old but I'm not dead yet) and cooked it with scrambled eggs. Then I took the leftover salsa and guac from our superbowl fiesta and dumped it over the chicken scrambled eggs. I love huevos ranchoros so much. It makes me feel happy inside.

Main Ingredients:

1/2 tbsp coconut oil

Leftover meat of your choice

2 eggs (3 if you are feelin crazy)

Salt/Pepper to your taste

Salsa (love this brand)

Guacamole

Step 1: Add coconut oil to pan on med. heat

Step 2: Add leftover cooked meat of choice and heat up

Step 3: In a bowl add your eggs and salt/pepper and scramble

Step 4: Pour your scrambled eggs over your meat in the pan

Step 5: Stir up all together and cook until eggs are done

Step 6: Plate your egg/chicken scramble

Step 7: Pour salsa and guac all over your egg/chicken scramble and EAT

What the eff is PALEO anyways?!

What is lean and mean? I don't even know what that means to me right now. I thought it meant eat 0 fat meat and no oil on my veggies. Because that's always a really delicious idea...what happened over the past couple of months of my paleoness? I went from eating like a caveman to eating like a bikini bodybuilder. That's not me and those aren't my goals right now. I want to be lean...but does that mean I need to eat lean?

I was first drawn to paleo because I was tired of eating 'diet' food. Low carb this, and fat free that. I loved ground beef (pre-chewed meat) and butter. Now I don't know what is going on. I'm eating skinless boneless chicken breasts and using no fats or oils in my food. Am I losing what it really means to be paleo? Cavemen didn't perfectly trim the fat from their wildebeests before tearing into it.

So I decided to see what Google felt about the issue. This is what I'm reading right now..and I'm diggin it.

Read it and try it out with me. Stop eating packaged paleo crap, eat more fatty meat, drink more water, and beast out like a caveman. More to come.