"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.

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.

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.

CrockPot Pork Loin

So I finally got to try my new Crockpot. I have been sick the last few days so this was an easy way to make dinner without doing much preparation. I found the original recipe in www.paleoplan.com but ended up changing it up to fit what ever I had in my fridge. Just combined the pork loin with 2 cans of tomatoes, a whole zucchini, 3 carrots, 2 garlic cloves, salt, pepper and basil. Then let it cook at low heat for 7 hours. I served it together with cauliflower rice. Definitely very good. The meat was really tender and the sauce was great, but next time I'll definitely use a pork tenderloin or some other cut without the fat on top. Just seems like such a waste not to make it the danish way with crisp pork crackling. I still have half a roast left so I'll give it a try next weekend.

Also I have decided to start logging in my meal and stats on a separate page as well as the weekly workout plan. The food log is mostly to get an idea of how much I actually eat in day since the amounts easily creep up on me. Also as I have mentioned earlier I need to get back on track with the training to make sure that I am ready for the upcoming triathlon season, and actually publishing my plans means I am somewhat accountable. We will see how it goes.

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.