"Krebinetter" with carrot stew

So since it's still cold outside the comfort food just keeps being fantastic. In my world comfort food has a lot to do with the things I grew up eating, meaning old fashioned danish dishes (and of course the whole being hot and all). If you have read through some of my recipes already you have figured out that ground pork is used fairly regularly, it is cheap, low fat (if you want that), and when prepared correctly i tastes absolutely fantastic. So I'm trying to convert a bunch of my favorite danish recipes into Paleo versions, making my mother so very proud (or so I hope).
Todays dinner was "Krebinetter" (no idea what to translate that into so give the pronunciation a try) with carrot stew. To feed four people (or two for dinner and lunch the next day) you need:

"Krebinetter"
0.5 lb ground pork
5 tbsp almond flour
3 tbsp ground parmesan (optional)
1 egg
salt and pepper
Butter or olive oil

Carrot stew:
6 medium carrots (shredded)
2 leeds (cut in small pieces)
2 cups of white cabbage (shredded) (optional)
2 cans of coconut milk
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cubes of chicken broth
Butter or olive oil

In a large pot fry the carrots, leeds and cabbage in butter for 4-5 minutes and take the pot of the heat. In a different pot add the coconut milk nutmeg, and chicken broth and let it all simmer for 15-20 minutes. Add the vegetables to the sauce and let it simmer another 5 minutes.
While the sauce simmers make 4-6 hamburgers out of the ground pork. Dip the hamburgers in egg and then in a mixture of almond flour, parmesan, salt and pepper. Fry the hamburgers over medium heat in butter or olive oil for 8-10 minutes on each side. Serve "krebinetter" on top of the stew.

New England Chuck Roast

So I guess I kinda owe a few post since I really haven't done any new cooking lately. So taday I pulled out the crockpot and made New England Chuck Roast with Broccoli Ala Madrid. I'm really new to the whole roast thing, so the meat that I bought was not really that great, resulting in a not so tender chuck roast. It still tasted great, but I'll definitely buy a better roast next time I try this. Also I think I'll use vegetable broth instead of water since the vegetables in the dish became very bland. So this was definitely a do over. Here is a picture non the less. Today I also made my own meal plan (See under meal plans) with all the recipes I have been wanting to try, so hopefully there will be a few more posts this week than I managed last week. I still love paleoplan, but a lot of the recipes shows up rather often so I really wanted to try some of my own stuff.

Went for another great run in the snow today (still counts even though the roads are pretty much clear now) and topped it off by making a snow angel on my way back, sometimes it is just great to act like your 5, good for the spirit...

Spicy pork chops with oven baked greens

So time is just absolutely flying by and I havnt been too great at posting. The main reason is that I have been waiting a lot of oldie but goldies so nothing new and exciting on the dinner front. But yesterday I got my act together and made something new, once again from www.paleoplan.com. The plan was to make spicy breaded pork chops with roast squash and red onions. I am going home to my parents for the weekend so I just added some red and yellow peppers to clean out the fridge. Very delicious, seems like most things get better if you dip them in almonds or wrap them in bacon. That should be a rule to live by.

I'm still loving the whole CrossFit thing, although so far I'm only going twice a week due to severe soreness afterwards. I am trying to figure out how I can incorporate these workouts into my triathlon program, but luckily that is not a concern until February when the real training begins. Talking about training I just bought a home trainer. So right now I have my road bike standing in front of my tv in my 16 square meter living room - a bit crowded but hey what do I need all that room for anyways... Unfortunately I have just found out that my bicycle repair skills are just as bad as I thought, meaning that the last time I fixed my flat tire I didn't do such a great job, resulting in a rather bumpy ride. Good thing I have can take the thing home and get my dad to fix it and I can start training next week... So there will be an update next week...

Creamy Pork Tenderloin

Ahhh doesn't that title just make you wan't to keep reading. Just like the one of the essential laws of cooking is that bacon makes everything better, and should be defined as a the perfect spice, cream sauce especially including mushrooms is a way to make a simple dish taste like something really fancy. The great great thing is that even though the conventional wisdom food police (impressive name) would probably knock down your door for making cream sauce they will have no jurisdiction in the Paleo world when the heavy cream is replaced by coconut milk.

Well that was quite an introduction to the dish. This is originally from www.paleodiet.com but since my mom used to serve pork tenderloin in creamy mushroom sauce I decided to go in that direction instead. Instead of adding only chicken broth to the sauce I added 1 cup of chicken broth and let that simmer for 5 minutes and then I added app. 1/2 cup of coconut milk to the sauce. Then I let it simmer another 10 minutes. So so delicious, and definitely a dish I would serve to impress my friends when they come for dinner...

You can always make more sauce by upping the broth or the coconut milk and then perhaps serve it with cauliflower rice. Also if you want a thicker sauce add some arrowroot as a thickener.

So after a long period of not feeling great I'm trying to get back on track with my workouts. So tonight I went for a fartleg run of 9.5km run. It is getting really really cold and dark outside which makes it a bit more difficult to get out from under the covers, but once I'm outside I absolutely love running in the cold. The air is so much fresher and my entire body seem to function better when it's close to zero degrees Celsius outside. Please find me a place to live where it is only cold when I have to go running - the rest of the time 20-25 degrees would be highly appreciated. So todays run was great up until the point where I tripped over an invisible stone on the ground and crashed onto the pavement. Now 30 minutes later (had to finish the planned run of course) I have to most beautifully colored knee to show for it - very much looking forward to waring shorts to CrossFit tomorrow evening - totally bad ass!!!

Winning people over...

So I had a friend over for dinner last night and decided to serve one of my all time favourites meatballs in curry - Paleo style! I had talked to her before hand and had promised to make a serving of rice for her since the thought of cauliflower rice did not sound appealing to her at all. So I made the dish, with a very large serving of rice (I really had no idea that 2 dl would make such a big batch - not a big rice cooker), a large serving of cauliflower rice and then oven baked hokkaido pumpkins.

Well she is a very polite person so she decided to give the cauliflower rice a try, and surprise surprise today I have a pot full of cooked rice and no cauliflower. So even though she is probably not going to be eating paleo from now on she could definitely see how great it was that instead of "empty" rice she had just eating a large amount of greens without really noticing...

So to those of you still willing to try some more Danish dishes here is the recipe (this one tastes much better than what my picture shows):

Meat Balls:
½ lb ground pork
1 diced onion
2 teaspoons salt
½ cup coconut milk
½ cup almond flour
1 egg
Pepper

Sauce:
1 diced onion
1 teaspoon olive oil
3-4 teaspoons of curry (depending on how strong you like it)
1 tablespoon fresh ginger
Arrowroot (if you like a thick sauce)
1 cup coconut milk
1 cube of chicken broth

Bring 5 cups of water with 2 teaspoons of salt to boil. While the water is heating up combine all the ingredients for the meat balls into a bowl and mix well. Shape the meat into meatballs using a tablespoon or teaspoon, and let them boil in the water for app 5 minutes or until they move to the surface of the water. Remove the finished meatballs from the water. Pour the rest of the water into a can for use in the sauce later. Now fry the onions together with curry and olive oil in the pot. Add the water from the meat balls, the chicken broth and the ginger, and let it boil for 5 minutes. Add the coconut milk and thicken with arrow root until you reach the right consistency. Add the meatballs to the sauce and let it it simmer for a few minutes. Serve with cauliflower rice.

The other night I made almond crusted salmon from www.paleoplan.com. I guess you can pretty much encrust any kinda fish in almonds or something like it to make it taste fantastic. This would also be a great dish to serve when having compagny over since it looks very nice as well. I served it with asparagus and tomatoes since that was all I had.

Steamed plaice rolls

So it has been a little while since my last post which is because I haven't been doing much of anything. My knee has been hurting the last few days so I decided to cut out the running until it gets better. Also due to some really bad food choices in the weekend I was not feeling good at all the first few days of the week. That just shows how important it is to eat the right things, and how badly your body reacts to a big cheat day/days.

But I was right back on track Monday just eating a bunch of my favorite dishes and not really trying anything new, so now I am feeling great again. I absolutely love fish and seafood so I had that for lunch and dinner today. Lunch was half an avocado filled with shrimp and sprinkled with wheat free soy sauce and lemon. So easy and very delicious.

For dinner (and lunch tomorrow) I made steamed plaice rolls with carrots, parsnip and leek and a side of baked green beans.
To make the fish dish (2-3 servings) you need:

250 g of plaice fillets (App 0.5 pound)
2-3 carrots
2 parsnips
1 leek
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1-2 dl vegetable broth (App 0.5-1 cup)
Thyme, salt and pepper

Cut the fillets in half down the middle, season them with salt and pepper and roll them into small rolls. Cut all the vegetables into sticks and fry them in a the olive oil in a large pan for 3-5minutes. Reduce to low heat, add the broth and the thyme and place the rolls on top of the vegetables. Let them steam under lid for 8-10 minutes or until the fish is tender. With food ike this who needs pasta!!!

Almond Plaice fillets

So the fact that I have a blog showing food and recipes is actually rather surprising to the people who know me, and also to myself if I have to admit it. I have never really liked to cook, I hated trying to many new things with regards to food since I had absolutely no idea how to combine things unless I had a recipe to follow. So to me this whole paleo thing has not only been great because my body functions best on this type of food, but I have really come to enjoy cooking, just in case you were thinking the opposite. I think it is fantastic to have some food I used to love, and then just trying with a few paleo friendly substitutes to make something similar, and then ending up with something that tastes even better.

So after tonights CrossFit workout I made Plaice fillets dipped in ground almonds with roasted green beans and oven baked hokkaido pumpkin. I just dipped the fillets in egg and then in ground almonds seasoned with salt, and then I fried them in coconut oil for a few minutes on each side. This was so delicious and ten times better than when they are dipped in bread crumps which is the normal. Give it a try you won't regret it...

So my workout plans haven'tbeen going to great, somehow life has a tendency to get in the way. But I made it to CrossFit this evening for an amazing workout. The WOW was 10 rounds of:
15 deadlifts with 30kg
15 push ups (still on my knees)

Afterwards we had a bonus tabata workout:
4 rounds of 4 different shoulder excercises with a 5 kg weight plate.

Definitely very busted after that, but in that great way where you feel like your actually doing something right.

Pumpkin season

So now pumpkin is finally in season, and I absolutely love oven baked pumpkin. I know it's a very starchy vegetable, but hey as long as I am not eating grains and other stuff that is bad for my, I am going to eat my pumpkin while I can. Also it is really great post workout food and since I just got home from a great CrossFit workout it might actually make recovery a little easier.

I could easily just inhale an entire pumpkin (mind you they are not that big) and call it dinner, but I figured it would be a good idea to balance it out with some protein and other vegetables. So I made some sloppy joes to go along with it. I pretty much followed the recipe but since I had no tomato sauce I used a can of salsa and a can of tomatoes, which resulted in some rather spicy but great sloppy joes. The sloppy joes that I remember was served inside a bun, so I just baked some portobello mushrooms and used them instead of the bread. The hokkaido pumpkin was just cut into small pieces without the shell and then baked at 200C until they started to get dark edges.

Todays CrossFit workout was 3 rounds of:
800m run
20 clean squats (15kg)
20 burpees (hate hate hate those)

We had 26 minutes and I didn't make the last 3 burpees in that time frame, so plenty of reason to keep at it.

Almost back to normal!!!

So back to the small war zone that used to be my apartment. One more day and I should be back to normal, meaning running water and not having my toilet standing in the middle of my kitchen (unplugged just in case you were wondering) until the bathroom is ready to be used. So today I actually got to cook real food, after having spent hours cleaning my kitchen to make it usable.

Tonights dinner was danish meat loaf served with a thai winter salad consisting of white cabbage, apple, orange and coconut cream with a little sweetener. Very delicious.

So if you feel like trying something different here is a few ideas.
The last couple of days the weather have been absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately due to a fight between me and my contacts I have had a very sore and light sensitive right eye. Fortunately this is also pretty much back to normal meaning I no longer scare the living ... out of the people I pass. So today I went for an easy 9.5 km run around the lake in my neighborhood and enjoyed the sunlight and tried to overlook the fact that the temperatures in no way matched the rest of the surroundings.

Taco Salad

So tonight I once again went to a intro crossfit lesson, and once again it was really great. I think I'll go to the normal one Thursday to see how it really is. We did a lot of introduction to new exercises and the 2 small circuit consisting of 4 rounds of:

10 Air squats
5 overhead pushes
5 box jumps
3 pull ups
10 sit ups

Afterwards we did 2 rounds of 8*8 of different bar lifts.

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to feel my upper body tomorrow, but the leg part of it was pretty easy today so that should be okay.

When I god home it was great to have pretty much all I needed to make a quick taco salad, which is just a green salad topped with taco seasoned meat, guacamole and salsa. Very easy, simple and delicious. I ate it cold, but it is just as good when the meat is still hot.

At the moment they are fixing the the toilets and the water in my building which means I have no running water. This is both good and bad. The bad thing is that I have to buy water for the cooking/drinking the next few days, which I of course forgot, and also I can't just go for a run since there is no shower. The good thing is that it forces me to go to the gym and it gives me an opportunity to stay a few days at my parents.

I'll be going home on Thursday and working from there until sometime next week. It is always great to go home but I really have to be on my toes with the food choices I make since my parents have a kitchen full of all kinds of things that I really should not eat if I wanna keep feeling good.

Wraps

So today I needed to use the last of the riced cauliflower and since I have been eating a lot of pizza lately I figured it was time to try something new. So I made a mix of 3 eggs and 100g riced cauliflower and made 2 "pancakes" out of it. They were pretty thick but thin enough that I could make a normal wrap out of them adding a little ham, guacamole, salad and salsa. This tasted absolutely fantastic, so ended up making another batch to bring to work tomorrow (had to rice a new cauliflower head so now I'm pretty much back where I started). I was planning on making a taco salad for dinner tomorrow evening, so I just prepared the meat today and used it in the wraps as well. This also makes the preparation almost zero when I get back from CrossFit tomorrow night.

Today is the first day of feeling good again after having been sick with a sore throat and fever that last week or so. So to celebrate this I went for a small run in the evening. It was only 6km of easy running since I didn't want to push it, but definitely great to get the body moving. Hopefully I'll be back on top of the world in no time.

Coconut chicken

As promished yesterday here is some pictures of the coconut chicken. They are really easy to make, just dip pieces of chicken in a half n half mixture of almond and coconut flour and then bake them at 350F (180C) for approximately 20 minutes. They work great as a finger food to bring to work as a snack.

So yesterday I did IMF until dinner and then I had som chicken curry with cauliflower rice. The curry is just everything from the fridge chopped up and cooked in coconut oil, curry and then when everything is soft and tasty you ad the coconut cream and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes. This is one of my "clean up the fridge" dishes. For a dessert I had an apple cut into pieces and then topped with some ice cold coconut milk (no picture). Very tasty.

Coconut salmon

So Mark just had a post about the carb count, and I guess it would be a great idea to try to track it for a few days to see how much I actually eat due to fruit etc. So the next couple of days I will try to post my carb count, and work at keeping it under 100g.
Today I had company and made this really great dish with salmon and coconut milk. I made this with a friend of mine a few days ago, and it is definitely a great dish to serve to show how great the food on this "diet" is. I modified it a bit by adding mushrooms to the sauce and then I made zucchini pasta and green beans to make it a more full meal.

Tonight I was actually going to go for a short run, but the weather is really crappy, so I will use this as an opportunity to get to bed early and actually get close to 8 hours of sleep - another ground stone in the Primal Blueprint lifestyle.

Cauliflower Pizza (Blomkålspizza for Ann's skyld)

So I was talking to a colleague of mine about food she could make for her daughter who is allergic to gluten and kinda envious of the stuff the other kids bring for lunch. So since I absolutely love pizza I figured this was the time to kill to birds, or whatever the saying is, and try out the cauliflower pizza. I followed a recipe I found on line but to cut a little back on the calories and the fat I only used half the amount og cheese, and that turned out great.

The recipe is rather simple:
2.5 dl cauliflower (riced)
1 dl cheese (I used low fat 11%)
1 egg
Oregano

For those who doesn't know how to make cauliflower rice here you go: just cut the cauliflower head into smaller pieces, heat them in the microwave for a few minutes and then grate them using a food processor or a cheese grater (I think it's called - råkostjern).

For the pizza crust preheat the oven to 225C. Mix the cauliflower, cheese and egg in a bowl and spread the "dough" out in on a piece of baking paper. Sprinkle with oregano and bake the crust for app 15 minutes or until it turns golden. Take out the crust and put your favorite topping on top. I used salsa instead of pizza sauce, a little cheese, mushrooms, ham and onions on this one. Bake the pizza for another 5 minutes under grill until the cheese has melted. Bon Appetit

The result is surprisingly good, the crust is stiff enough to eat by hand and even taste great without topping as a bread stick. I tried doing some calculations and by making the crust like this the whole thing is something like 250 calories. If you compare this to the type og crust you normally buy and just put toppings on they are app 700-800 calories. So this is definitely a much better choice.

Sushi!!!

So today my local store had sushi stuff on sale so I just had to try making it almost paleo style. The recipe is pretty simpel, and since I'm not a sushi chef probably all wrong but here it comes.

Boil and mash one cauliflower head in salted water and mash it with a TS of butter. Add a bit of rice vinegar until you get that sweet sushi rice taste, and put it in the fridge until it gets cold. Take 1 piece of toasted nori and place it on a sushi mat covered in plastic film. Add the "rice" to the nori in a thin layer leaving out app 2cm in the top for closing. Add your choice of filling I used salmon and avocado in these, but anything pretty much goes. When your done rolling the seal the film tightly around the roll place it in your freezer for 10 min to make the cutting easier. Voila.
You can find tons of guides on how to do the rolling online just google it. They tasted really great, so this is definitely not the last time I'll try this, next time I'll probably use some more interesting filling, but didn't want to waste it if it didn't work with the cauliflower. One small head would make app 18 rolls (3 nori pieces).

Cauliflower Sushi!

A few days ago I made Red Snapper Azteca. only I used whatever white fish was available at the grocery store.

The same evening I got a new toy. In Denmark we have two really funny TV-chefs that have an ongoing competition concerning who has the most electrical tools, and I'm seriously giving them a run for their money. My biggest problem is that I have like 2 square meters of kitchen, so the many things I can't live without are kinda crowding the space (funny how the same thing goes for shoes and clothes). Anyway I got me a crockpot (slow cooker) which I had to buy from the UK since no danish stores have something like this. So now I am really looking forward to trying it out next week.

Primal Blueprint 30day challenge

So it's been a while since my last post but life just seem to get in the way. As I mentioned last week I am doing the primal blueprint 30 day challenge which started Monday. I actually meant to start a week early and that also went pretty well until I got hit by a car biking home from the movies Saturday (probably not a primal kinda guy ;-)) So even though nothing happened Saturday and Sunday was spend feeling like I had been hit by a mammoth and feeling pretty sorry for my self.

So after a weekend of not so clean eating I got back on track Monday ready to do the challenge. So far it is going pretty well, the eating part is so easy as long as you plan ahead and do the shopping to last a few nights. Due to soreness and stiffness I haven't done any exercise, but today I feel so much better so I'm looking forward to a nice and easy run this evening.

Yesterday I did IMF and then I had Pepper steak with salsa salad . The combination of the warm meat and bell pepper combined with the cold shredded carrots was very interesting and surprisingly good, and any salsa kind of salad is so mych better than just a green side salad. Lunch today will be the left overs from yesterday, nice and easy.

I am definitely very psyched to continue this challenge and apologise to all the friends that I'm driving crazy talking about this.

Chicken Mediterranean

So the last few days have been rather quiet, due to yet another visitor - hopefully everything will get back to normal once the summer is over. Anyway I made Grilled Chicken Mediterranean with roasted asparagus for dinner Saturday night. I really like finding new ways to cook chicken, since the normal grilled chicken is rather bland in the long run, and this was definitely an easy version.

Saturday night I went for cocktails with a friend, nothing paleo about that, but really really delicious and definitely good for the soul (or the first few were anyway - after that it probably got a bit blurry). So normally I would end up eating a fallafel or kebab on the way home since drinking kinda brings up the "I need bad food with tons of salt" in me, but instead I made it all the way home and then had my left over lunch for very early breakfast. Always good to eat something before crashing after a night like that, makes the next day a lot easier...

Cacao Nip Pork Chops

So my tattoo excuse doesn't really count anymore since it's not that sore anymore, so I'm back to working out like normal - or almost. I can't go to the pool or in the lake due to bleaching and infection, so I'm stuck with biking and running for now. I eased into it all with a 30min yoga workout today and it definitely felt a lot better than it looked - I'm really not the graceful swan kinda type. Also today was another day of IMF which went without any problems what so ever. It's amazing how you can go a whole day and not be hungry, but it is probably a consequence of the steep decline in training hours that has followed my back problems.

For dinner I had cacao nip pork chops with green beans. But I ended up with a rather different variation I think. Since it's still summer in Denmark butternut squash is non existent in the danish stores, so the salad thing that was to be served with the pork chops got canceled. Instead I spiced up the green beans by adding carrots, red onions and cherry tomatoes to get more vegetables into the dish. Also I kinda missed the "nip" part of cacao nip so just used normal cacao as a spice. All in all it tasted great. This is the great thing about something like paleoplan.com - you get all these different recipes and if you have an open mind you will taste some great food that you wouldn't have thought of othervise.

Next time I'll follow the recipe and see what the difference is.

Intermittend Fasting day

So after some great days with friends from back home (and their small bundle of joy) not really thinking to much of food and exercise it is time to get back to reality. This has been hindered a little by the fact that I ended their visit by getting a tattoo on the hip, making the whole running thing a bit difficult until I can wear running tights again :-). But hey I needed my friend to hold my hand.

So yesterday I went for a long walk which definitely doesn't suit my temper, but I guess it was better than nothing. Should have been out walking today as well, but it has been pouring down all day, so just stayed inside relaxing on the couch underneath a warm blanket - life is good.

So since I new I couldn't run today I figured it was a good day to practice intermittent fasting. I have done this before and really like how it makes me feel, so as long as my training schedule doesn't interfere with this I am going incorporate this into my week.

I stopped eating yesterday at 6pm and then went 24 hours without eating until today at 6pm. I really haven't been hungry today, I guess the whole "doing nothing all day" might influence that. At 6pm I had Paleo meat loaf with roasted green beans.

In Denmark we normally make a variant of this dish by using ground pork and then wrapping it in bacon instead of topping it with barbecue sauce. Definitely two very different dishes, but both tastes really great. In the meal loaf I used coconot milk insted of almond milk since the latter is rather difficult to find in the danish stores.

So apparently stretching isn't for wimps...

So last week I got some rather crappy news. I went to my physiotherapist because my bag was making a fuss again, and apparently I should have been listening to the yelling a lot sooner. So the muscles in my bag are getting even more cramped up and I can't even go 40km on the bike without it hurting. So the triathlon is on hold for now, and so is the long bike rides until I get this sorted out. At least I can still run and swim, so it's not all rainy clouds. Speaking of I went for a 10km run this morning in pouring rain - which was great (yes I'm weird like that).

I'm still trying to eat paleo which will hopefully get a lot easier now when my training amount decreases. I havn't uploaded anything new the last few days but that because I have been eating a lot of the same things as I have already shown, and also just easy food that doesn't require much preparation.

But yesterday I had Zucchini and Beef-Mince which doesn't look like much but tasted great and was really easy and fast to make. Next time I make it I would probably add some more vegetables to spice it up a little.

Today I had Curry chicken for dinner which took a bit of preparation since you pretty much make the rice yourself, but it was totally worth it. I think it is so great that you can find substitutes for pasta, rice and potatoes - and by doing, at the same time you get a lot of vegetables. For those who are wondering by making the rice yourself I just meand chop up the cauliflower in the food processor and the frying it in a pan. I fried the "rice" in curry to spice the dish up even more, and next time I'll probably add an apple to the mix since curry and apple go great together.

So next week I'll have yet another visit from some great friends (hey they might be reading this) so the whole paleo will be depending on the food available where we go to eat and what they are up for. So I probably wont post again for a few days...