(Sort of) Recent Eats

Quick and dirty run-down of some late November meals:

This is one of my favorite lunches to make. It needs to be made in advance, to allow the nori to get soft, but it's so so good. And once it's made, it's fast and easy to eat!

"Sushi:" (Pal-ushi? Lazy person's sashimi?)

• A can/pouch/what-have-you of salmon (but I've used other fish as well)
• Avocado
• Fermented vegetables (sauerkraut, kimchi, whatever)
• Coconut aminos
• Toasted sesame oil
• Nori, as above
• Maybe some grated/dry ginger or garlic (if it's not already in your fermented vegetables)

Roll it up and let it sit! Then enjoy a pretty fancy lunch! 

 Pretty simple meal (I probably ate it for all three):

Brussel sprouts, cooked in bacon fat or tallow, and pork breakfast sausage (this was before I finished clearing out my non-AIP items).

This was a pretty exciting concoction: 

• Loose pork breakfast sausage
• Mushrooms
• Onions
• Cranberries

Sauteed and stuffed in a (unfortunately tasteless) roasted pumpkin! I don't know if I would bother with a whole pumpkin again (I had two and they were both pretty bland) but this is definitely a saute to make again (and again and again... once I'm off strict AIP or if I make my own sausage spices). 

This breakfast was exciting! It's my first time introducing whole-fruit citrus back into my diet. I've been using lemon and lime juice for several months now, but I had yet to eat any citrus fruit and this grapefruit tasted so good! It's funny how I used to sprinkle sugar on my grapefruits, because this was very sweet on its own. Served with more breakfast sausage and more vegetables than a vegetarian (carrots and kale)!

And finally...... MY HALF HOG SHARE!

I was afraid it wouldn't fit in my freezer, but there was room to spare!

Seriously, it was like Christmas came early (for both of us)!

And such personal service put a smile on my face! 

Seriously, this half-hog business is the way to go. It all came out to about $5/lb AND when I got there, several people didn't want their organs and I got about 10 lbs of bones for free because the farmer just wanted to clear out his freezer. Unfortunately they've moved so I'm not sure if they will be back in the area, but if they are, next time I might try a lamb share. 

And to wrap it up, one of our last PChem lectures posed a question along these lines:

"Do you think a low carbohydrate, high protein, low fat diet is a good way to treat a human with diabetes mellitus?"

Our professor's answer was a resounding yes! He told us a story of an old friend of his (who taught at the med school) who had DM and could no longer read/prepare his lectures due to diabetes cataracts. At his wit's end, and against the advice of his doctors (including his peers), he adopted the Atkins diet. And voila! much of his sight was restored and he regained much of his health. Unfortunately, he has since passed away, but our professor went on to talk about the benefits of keep insulin low and why Atkins had a lot going for him. He expressed utter confusion as to why MDs still suggest high carbohydrate diets for DM patients, but then again, one of his catch phrases is, "MDs know nothing," so...

In addition, at one point he asked us, "So... do you think starvation is a good way to get an animal to lose weight?" after talking about the body's coping mechanisms during survival, including things like cortisol response and protein metabolism. Again, the answer was no, which was music to my ears! I wonder (hope) if some of my classmates' minds were blown... 

Lately

Here's a midweek splurge:

I slow-cooked hot Italian elk sausages over cabbage and carrots (with the last of the Merlot). It sort of dried out the sausages, but I really just wanted that sweet and toasty vegetable taste. These were SUPER spicy. I've turned into even more of a wimp about spice since this whole Paleo thing (which I'm totally ok with).

However, I did decide to go FULL ON autoimmune protocol this week. I cleared out ALL possible spices (including black pepper!). I didn't throw them out, just removed them from the kitchen. I'm going to do this thing right for once and hope it makes a difference because taking dairy out? Turns out the effects have been pretty subtle. I haven't truly started yet, obviously. Hot Italian elk sausage doesn't fit the bill - I'm just trying to clear out my freezer for the half pig, so I figured I'd better get all the sausage out of the way. I also made broth before I really scoured the AIP spice list, so it has black pepper in it.

These were the main dishes of the long weekend. I made some pork breakfast sausages and vegetable dishes separately. This here is a liver pate:

It contained:

• beef liver
• 1 lone chicken liver
• 1 lone chicken heart
• garlic
• onions
• salt
• Merlot (ok, maybe THIS was the last of it)
• rosemary, thyme, sage
• avocado (secret ingredient!)
• broth
• beef tallow

I'd never used avocado before, but I was looking to make it extra creamy. I'd also never really used broth before, I don't think, but my food processor is kind of crap, so it had to go in the blender (no one likes gritty liver pate). It was the BEST I'd ever made. It was more thick soup than pate, but it had a nice creamy fluff to it, and I don't like beef liver the best anyway, and I often use bacon fat, so that could be why.

Eaten warm and with a spoon!

This soup was kind of disastrous... Ok, that's an overstatement. I roasted two different kinds of winter squash the night before and then the next day blended it and roasted the chicken. As you can see, I have terrible spatial reasoning skills in the kitchen....

So that was the first problem. What you see is a combination of...

• a lot of winter squash
• cilantro, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, salt (and that's about it for AIP curry spices)
• coconut milk

It actually just barely fit. And that was some delicious stuff, even cold!

Meanwhile I was roasting a chicken. Let's just say it's a good thing there's a gaping hole in my ceiling where the fire alarm should be. This is my second time trying to roast chicken in my apartment, and each time it just fills up with smoke. I stuck it out for almost an hour at 415* and since it was a pretty skinny bird, I thought that'd be ok. Turns out not. By an hour, it was still juicy pink and not cooked through. So after a quick call to my mom (I need to be told what's sanitary and what's not with meat... and even then, my family has fairly low standards), I put the chicken in a slow cooker, and put this winter squash puree over it. I wasn't thrilled about this. I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but there's something about cooking cinnamon and turmeric that just... doesn't work. It never tastes as good on the other side. And so this happened here. What was my beautiful, delicious chilled soup turned into an ok-enough curry-like puree the next day. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, it's just not... delicious. Let's just say it'll be a while before I go around buying whole chickens again... (or even parts, because then I just feel bad for the rest of the bird, and real farmers don't sell their parts for any kind of reasonable-to-me price).

That's it for now, but I do have a happy-rant from PChem this week coming up!