Spaghetti sans spaghetti

Yesterday we had a bit of ground beef that needed cooking, so I was really excited to make Spaghetti-sauced meat over roasted green beans again. This is one of the recipes from Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution book. Seriously, this recipe will address your worst spaghetti cravings better than anything else, and it’s easy to prepare. Not only that, but it’s easy to approximate when like me, you’re just trying to use up some extra ground meat. I’m someone that generally really depends on recipes for cooking, but I was able to fudge this one easily without having to worry about measurements. My only complaint is that I can’t seem to get the green beans “slightly crispy” as the recipe describes. Too much olive oil maybe?

I know I constantly post about Mark Sisson’s recipes, but when it gets right down to it, Robb Wolf’s approach to paleo eating is excellent. I just keep forgetting about the recipes in the back of the Paleo Solution because they’re hard to read and don’t include pictures. I would be really happy if Robb ever got around to making a properly formatted cookbook!  

yep, more food

On tonight’s menu was another recipe from Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals book: Cauliflower “Arroz Con Pollo”, or as I described it to my boyfriend, “chicken with a bunch of vegetables”. 

I enjoyed laying out everything for this one, since it involves a nice set of fresh ingredients. I generally prefer white meat with fowl, but opted for chicken thighs as they are supposed to be more tender. This was the first time I’ve tried cauliflower as a substitute for rice. 

This also marks the first time I’ve ever cooked with saffron. That stuff is crazy! I put in the recommended tiny amount, but I still feel like my palate is shying away from this one a bit. Strong flavour! And difficult to figure out, somehow. 

Anyway, the end result was pretty good. Typical for many of Mark’s recipes: flavorful and satisfying. The cauliflower “rice” was a perfectly acceptable substitute – I’m not a huge rice fan anyway (sorry rice enthusiasts!), and I’d rather be eating MOAR VEGETABLES. 

One interesting observation: while I generally quite enjoy these recipes for supper, I’m not often interested in eating them as leftovers. Not sure why that is, and it’s cramping my lunch packing style. Oh well. Really glad I halved the recipe on this one.

Side note: I also ate turnips earlier this week (another Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy suggestion) – grated and cooked like hash brown. This is the most I have ever enjoyed turnips. Will definitely be doing this again. 

mystery vegetable

What is this mystery vegetable? Could it be… brussels sprouts?

It’s true! Grated brussels sprouts. From Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint Quick & Easy Meals book. Remember how I said I was underwhelmed by that book? A couple more recipes and I might be ready to retract that statement. It’s not as bad as I thought. Patience, grasshopper. 

Anyway, this is a really quick & easy (haha) way to prepare brussels sprouts: grate them in a food processor, sautee in a pan with olive oil. That’s it (takes about 10 minutes). Another victory for the sprouts!

Like a lot of other people who make an effort to eat healthy, I’m trying to extend my foray into the wonderful world of vegetables. While I doubt I will ever be as knowledgable as some foodies I know (particularly the vegans), I still think this is an important exercise for everyone. If dabbling in different recipes and preparation methods will help you eat healthier, then do it. I think too many of us have suffered through eating mushy vegetables that have had the sh*t cooked out of them, and have never known how awesome they can be. 

Listen up parents (and adults who need to eat more vegetables): do this. Find new ways to cook vegetables. Have them every day. Have lots of them. Find weird ones and cook them with your kids. Experiment. And for goodness sake, don’t hide them! Your kids will never learn to love the veg if they don’t even know they’re eating them! To start with, try roasting vegetables. It makes them awesome. Trust me. And that is today’s portion of completely unwarranted parenting advice. Please understand that I only say these things because I feel more like a kid who has an adult capacity for communication. I am a grown up version of your child. 

On the menu for Thursday: turnips. ugh. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Rick

I want to take a minute to talk about a Rick I knew.

I’d been following the work of a particular photographer for a number of years. It started when he commented on some of my photos, and I looked at his photos and commented in kind. We started following each other’s work, eventually spreading from my-expressions.com to flickr to twitter. Last year, Rick made the unfortunate announcement that he had been diagnosed with cancer. His communication became more sparse, and eventually stopped.

I finally found out the other day that Rick had indeed passed. It made me sad, and it makes me think a lot about how we connect with people, particularly online.

This was what I knew about Rick:

• he lived in Vancouver
• he was a photographer
• he had a cat
• he liked to photograph discarded coffee cups

That’s it. I never knew Rick’s last name, or what he looked like, or what he actually did for a living. I don’t know if he had family that he was close to, or a best friend. I hope he did. 

Did I know him well? Not at all. But I still felt a connection, and it’s one that may not have happened any other way, except for online. It’s a good reminder that the people on the other side of the screen are real. 

chicken with artichoke hearts in garlic sauce

Given how happy I’ve been with Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint cookbook, I went ahead and bought Mark’s Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals book. To be totally honest, I was a bit underwhelmed. I feel like this was tossed off quickly, and not as well thought out as his other books. Still, there are a couple of good recipes in it, including this one: chicken with artichoke hearts in garlic sauce. This was quite easy to prepare and didn’t take very long (hence the “quick and easy” part I guess) and it was very flavourful. I was told it tastes like an Italian vacation in your mouth. I’m having it again for lunch today. 

fancy schmancy

Chicken cutlets with warm green olive and shallot vinaigrette. Recipe from epicurious. I used turkey instead of chicken, and passed on the radicchio leaf plating, but this turned out pretty well. It looks fancy, and tastes good. Actually the taste was more… accessible than I expected it to be. Does that make any sense? I didn’t have to try as hard to like it as I thought. Anyway, this would be a good recipe to make if you want to impress someone, I think. Looks fancy (my crappy phone photo doesn’t do it justice), tastes good, easy to prepare. Win! I served it with some bok choy, which I love.

While I was stir frying the bok choy, a small fire started because something spilled over in the burner at some point and I didn’t notice. This is following last night’s explosion in the kitchen, plus a couple of recipe duds before that, so my cooking ego isn’t doing so well right now… Here’s hoping my next attempt is better. Maybe I should cook something I’ve made before? I have a terrible habit of never making anything more than once – I’m always moving on to the next recipe. Does anyone else do this? 

Still cookin’

Sunday night seemed like a good time for home made pizza. It’s been a while, but this one turned out OK. Tomato sauce base with prosciutto, red and green peppers, onion and black olives with mozzarella and a bit of parmesan. 

Earlier in the week I tried to make shrimp cakes with spinach slow and coconut almond dressing from Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint Cookbook. I say “tried” because the shrimp cakes decided they didn’t want to be cakes at all and ended up getting mixed in with everything else to form a salad contraption. As with the other recipes in Sisson’s book, it was quite flavourful and satisfying – though for some reason I keep expecting not to like this one (maybe because it didn’t work the way it was supposed to?) which kept me from enjoying it a bit. The dressing is quite tasty though, and I’ll certainly make the salad part of this recipe again. 

Five Spice

Tonight’s dinner: Five Spice Beef and Broccoli stir fry from Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint cookbook. I was really impressed with how flavorful this was. The marinade is super tasty and adding fresh herbs at the end is a nice touch.

tonkatsu pork

So I guess cooking is something I’m doing more of lately? Another successful supper: pork tonkatsu with watermelon-tomato salad. The pork turned out well (this is a good thing to cook when you’ve had a bad day – pounding out the meat would be a great stress reliever!), and the salad is a nice, unexpected combination. The sweetness of the watermelon balances out the arugula nicely. Recipe from epicurious.

tagliatelle

I cooked this for supper tonight and it was SO good. Easy and quick too – I’ll definitely be making this again. Tagliatelle with Prosciutto and Orange. Recipe from epicurious.