AIP Gazpacho

Ok, this isn't exactly an appetizing photo. 

But I can assure you it's delicious and will hit the spot if you've been missing regular gazpacho. These have all sorts of flavors, without inflammation-inducing nightshades.  Ideally I'd get even more ambitious and fancy with the ingredients, but these were born out of an over-the-hill bag of salad greens and whatever else was in the fridge already, because it's crunch time, baby. 

Ingredients:

Big bunch of salad greens (whatever mix you like, but avoid added herbs)

One large cucumber, cut into pieces

1 T of apple cider vinegar 

1 T of 'kraut juice (I used this) 

A few basil leaves

A few chive... strands? 

2 T of olive oil 

Salt and black pepper to taste 

Add coconut water to other ingredients in a blender and blend until you reach your or your blender's desired consistency 

Served with left over baked chicken thighs, dunked right in. 

Variation on a theme (because I ran out of cucumbers and had something else):

Big bunch of salad greens

3 C of watermelon

1 T of apple cider vinegar

A few basil leaves

A few mint leaves

1/2 C of red onion, chopped

2 T of avocado oil

Salt and white pepper to taste

Add coconut water to other ingredients in a blender and blend until you reach your or your blender's desired consistency  

Served with half a duck breast. 

*I do realize pepper isn't AIP, but I can eat it, and I trust that if you can't, you'll just leave it out. 

Asian Style Chicken Soup for the Soul

What's better than making a pot of broth on a rainy day? Making chicken soup on a rainy day! Especially when the whole thing takes an hour in a pressure cooker.

You will need...

• 3 lbs. of chicken drumsticks 
• 2 lbs. of carrots 
• 2 lbs. of mushrooms
• 3 red onions 
• 1 bag of frozen peas
• 1 lb. of spinach
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 tbs. of grated ginger 
• 1 tbs. of fish sauce (I use Redboat)
• 1 tbs. of coconut aminos 
• Optional: 1-2 chicken feet and/or 1 ham hock (I used both, only because I like my broth extra flavorful and nutritious)

Directions: 

Sauté the onions in your cooking fat of choice (I used tallow) until translucent. Brown the drumsticks and add the garlic. Add everything else (except the spinach) and cover with water. Add salt and white pepper to taste. Cook for 30-45 min (counting from when the pressure indicator pops up) depending on how mushy you like your vegetables. When it's done and you take the lid off, remove the feet and hock (use them again!) and stir in the spinach. 

Nutritious, indeed!

We're still waiting on spring over here! 

Recipe: Sweet beet soup

I'm gonna throw specific amounts in here and everything. Get ready.

20 oz. cooked beets, in pieces (I cheated)
3 c. cooked butternut squash, cubed
2 c. cooked fennel, in pieces
1 can coconut milk
salt, from the cooked vegetables
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme
a sprinkle of ground cloves

Put in a blender and blend until smooth. Enjoy warm.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A Very AIP Christmas (and New Year)

The first morning I was home, I had a simple breakfast of bacon and kale:

I realized there was no fat for me to eat, other than coconut oil, so I made a whole pound of bacon for that fat, and I took my first stab at making lard.

The verdict is........ well, it took me two hours to chop all that up, and even then it probably wasn't as small as it should be. The food processor looked like it was going to explode when I tried that, so I had to do it by hand. I probably ended up with about 3 c. of lard, much less than I was expecting. Sure, it tasted good and I was able to not burn any of it. But until I get a meat grinder or something, I don't think my frozen pork fat is going anywhere. 

For Christmas Eve dinner with family friends, I made three recipes. The first as a simple pot roast, the second was a parsnip and white and yellow carrot mash (a big hit with many non-paleo folk, also included lard and broth), and the third was a new liver pate recipe: blueberry balsamic liver pate, except I used half chicken and half duck liver. I doubled it, and was left with almost twice as much blueberry topping as I wanted but I thought it turned out really well. The two other liver-lovers at dinner weren't thrilled with it. I think they prefer it more savory. But for me, as much as I love savory liver pate when it's fresh and warm, I really don't like it cold as leftovers the next day. But this recipe I'm enjoying eating days later and luckily I have a lot leftover.

For Christmas Day...

One little boy was very happy to have his own stocking

We started with an apple and fennel soup

The main course consisted of...

A beet and orange salad (I had to use regular oranges)

 Cauliflower and leek stuffing (so good, it felt just like grits)

Roasted brussel sprouts in bacon fat

 And a fresh ham (from my pig share) with apple sauce

I followed TPM's recipe, with some snafus in cooking times (I think I tried to stuff too much in the pan) plus I stuck in a lot of whole cloves

The night finished with another round of this pumpkin pie, this time with a little less gelatin. It turned out much better than last time and is shaping up to be a go-to recipe. 

As for New Year's Eve, I put some GT's kombucha in my champagne glass and snacked on caviar-topped cucumbers and then polished it off with some more pumpkin pie. It was later than some of us had stayed up in a while...

We (I) added another four-legged addition to our family. This is my first experience with a shepherd and he's shaping up to be a doozy :) 

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!