Brussel Sprouts with Almonds and Ginger/Soy dressing

So the earlier post was yesterdays dinner, and since it is the weekend my energy is slowly getting back on track, hence this second post...

Dinner today was just pasta with meat sauce which is just the chili recipe with whatever vegetables I needed to get rid off served on top of lightly boiled squash. Delicious. But that is not the reason for the post, behold the side dish.... Brussel Sprouts with almonds in Ginger/Soy dressing. I have never liked brussel sprouts, but to be honest I probably havn't tried them since I was 10, but this dish was fantastic.

Recipe for 4 persons:

1 lb brussel sprouts

1 handfull almonds

Dressing:

4 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp minced ginger

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp tamari soy sauce

Boil the brussel sprouts in water with 2 tsp salt for app 5 minutes or until they are tender. Chop the almonds into large chunks and dry roast them. Add the dressing to the brussel sprouts, stir it well and sprinkle with almonds. Easy dish that tastes great.

Fruited Chicken Thighs

So my whole statement of coming back from vacation with plenty of energy is really not working out as planned. I have been dead tired all week and on top of that I have gotten the worst cold ever. I hate having a cold, you are not really sick so you go to work looking and feeling like crap, and on top of the you don't even get the pity vote, because it is just a cold...

Anyhow as promised I would try to be better at posting in the new year, so last night I made Fruited Chicken Thighs with Roasted Asparagus and Cauliflower Rösti.

I had some leftover "rice" from last night and instead of thowing it away I just mixed it with a ½ cup of grated cheese and some ham, and then let it bake for 30 minutes or so - voila Cauliflower Rösti . The entire meal was really great, and a lot easier than I had expected (never was any good at the whole chicken stuffing thing).

This week has not been great on the eating front but my plan is to go almost full frontal next week. Almost being code for cocktails and cheese in moderation being alright - a girls gotta live a little.... So hopefully being a bit more strict will also turn my body around and give me more energy, and get rid of this stupid cold.

Happy New Year

So I'm not dead or anything, but December turned out to be rather stress full due to exams and work so didn't have the time to post. I spend my vacation in Cap Verde away from the snow in Denmark so I should be back with plenty of energy by now. Lets hope that is the case, and that I have not lost everyone due to my break.

Of course the resolution for the new year is to get back on track with the food, exercise, and the blog. So yesterday I went for a 15 km run and then finished the evening of by making coconut shrimp with honey dill carrots. I made the sauce for the shrimp on light coconut milk and then served it on top of "rice". This is definitely one of my new favourites and definitely one of the dishes I will be serving when I have friends over for dinner.

Hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years and that you are ready for 2011.

"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...

Winter = Comfort Foods

So the first snow just hit Denmark, and as always the entire country is in panic, or at least it gives everyone a common theme to complain about. And of course it is cold, everything gets soaked and the roads are terrible but it is also the perfect excuse to stay in, cuttle up on the couch and stay there all weekend (or something like that). So since I had decided to be all lazy and not go to the grocery store I decided to raid the fridge and make a bowl of soup. Inspired by the recipe for creamy pork tenderloin I just emptied the fridge and this is the result:

250g Mushroom
2 leeks
1.5 C White Cabbage
4 chicken sausages
2 cans of coconut milk
2 cubes of chicken broth
Butter or olive oil

In a large pot fry the mushrooms, leeks, cabbage and sausages in butter or olive oil. When the mushrooms starts getting soft add the coconut milk and the chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for 10-15 minutes (or until the you get the desired thickness). Thats it, serve and enjoy. It might look strange but it tastes really really good, and you can pretty much add whatever kind of vegetable or meat you like. Crispy bacon would probably have been delicious or dry fried ham, I just happened to have some left over sausages in the fridge.

So even though the weather tells you to stay indoor and be cosy and warm, the newly fallen snow is my favorite running environment. I get all giddy when the first snow falls (just ask my running partner and all my friends who think I'm insane). Everything just becomes quiet, the air is more fresh, you pretty much have the streets to yourself, and no matter what time of day it is it is bright outside instead of gray boring. So when people start immigrating into the gym to use the treadmills to avoid the cold weather I do the opposite and run as often as I can. So if you are one of the people out there thinking that this is not running weather just give it a try, it might surprise you.

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...

What the ....

So this is just going to be a quick post since I found this both funny and sad. I was in the gym for my crossfit workout Monday and noticed a note hanging in the lounging area:

For the early risers - the gym will serve free breakfast bread every Friday from 7-9.30.

It is just so funny that you see a note like this at your gym, but it's actually even more sad that this is how they try to get people to go to the gym. Just needed to get that out there.

On a side note Mondays workout was:
8 min of:
7 pushups (done on one leg due to bad knee ;-))
7 Ball squats (or what ever they are called)

Bonus Tabata:
8 rounds:
Ball throws
Sit ups
Rowing

And I'm still sore today

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.