Kitchen Sink Paleo Roasted Sweet Potato Soup!

Hey everyone! I've been meaning to do an article on the freezer exchanges I've been holding for awhile. Monthly me and some other folks get together with a bunch of the same freezer meals we've made and then trade for some variety. Saves money and time and kicks my butt into gear to make meals ahead! There's a whole article on it here so I won't repeat but this month I'm going to share a recipe I whipped up the other day. I call it kitchen sink soup because the first time I made it I used everything I had in the kitchen except the sink!

Let's get started, the ingredients are as follows (bear in mind I made 6 in one go for the freezer exchange but you can scale it back for a family sized portion, proportions are not a science here!):

• 4 costco bags of sweet potatoes
• a giant costco ham
• 2 boxes of almond milk
• 3 boxes of beef broth
• 2 jars of pickled jalapeno peppers (these are to taste, I didn't use all of them)
• cauliflower (because it was in the fridge)
• goats cheese (garnish)

So if you're looking at these ingredients this recipe is cow dairy free, grain free and sugar free! You could easily substitute the almond milk for some cream if you wanted it to be smoother or use regular cream cheese :)

I seem to have deleted all my photos so I'll have to remake this in the future to retake the photos, please bear with me for now! Bear in mind also that I cooked this up half at a time because of the size of my stock pot, but if you have a bigger pot you can do it all at once.

To prepare the sweet potatoes I smothered them in coconut oil then baked them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet at 400F for 45 mins like they say on Nom Nom Paleo.

I let those chill in the fridge  overnight because it was late, not because it's necessary. The next day I peeled the skins off (they just slide right off by hand, which I guess it's good I chilled them after all!) and tossed them in my stock pot. I also put in my almond milk, beef broth cauliflower and jalapenos and cooked it on medium to high heat until the cauliflower was cooked. You can play around with the ingredients, honestly I don't think the cauliflower did much for the recipe except act as a "done" indicator.

I then took my immersion blender and blended it until it was a smooth silky consistency. I then poured in the ham and mixed it up. This was a lot of ham BUT it gave the soup some weight and made it more of a balanced meal. From there I scooped it into freezer bags and froze them.

What's your favourite make ahead meal? 

How do I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full?

I've been doing a lot of thinking and reading about mindful eating and I think I can definitively say that I see two main categories of mindful eating behaviour: over eating in a sitting and eating when you're not physically hungry. For me what it boils down to is that most of my eating is procedural and habitual and as such I'm not thinking when I eat.

I remember way back to my elementary school gym teacher who told me "it takes 3 weeks to make a good habit and only a week to break it!" This is a little devastating because when I think of vacations I think of at least a week so in a week I could undo all my efforts. But I guess this is the point. I'm not supposed to be on good behaviour, I'm supposed to always eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. Which means I'm allowed ice cream. And potato chips.

Anyways, I got a little off topic thinking about the poutine flavoured potato chips I left behind on the kitchen counter this morning when I left. At the time I wasn't hungry and consciously knew I would not get hungry for several hours after the fabulous smoothies I made Alex and I this morning. I'm regretting it now but not because I'm actually hungry. It's a craving. Which is not real hunger.

Back on track (I think I have EDD - Engineers Deficit Disorder, like ADD but it's untreatable because being an engineer is so awesome!) So I need to break my habits, but how do I do that? A quick google search brought me to this: 3 Easy Steps to Breaking Bad Habits. For the record I don't think knuckle cracking is a bad habit.

A quick summary though:

1. make it conscious, 
2. put it in writing so it really sinks in, and 
3. bait and switch. 

The last one I think you need to be careful with. You and I need to substitute eating for something healthy and productive. (Refer to the Before I Eat app for suggestions!)

I like steps and tangible things I can do. I also like a schedule so I'm going to draw on a challenge I saw on Pinterest not too long ago called How To Become A Mindful Eater In 10 Days, it was a mindful eating challenge. I see a lot of parallels between this challenge and the Thin Womans Brain steps for mindful eating, which reinforces my faith in it! I also saw something similar on Psychology Today so booya!

I call it a challenge because I tend to be more motivated when it's a challenge, and hopefully not demotivated afterwards. I also want to stretch it out a bit, so basically I want to spend three weeks on not over eating and three weeks focusing on not eating when I'm not hungry. I want to do it in this order because I can spend the first three weeks not actively thinking about but taking into account not eating when I'm not hungry while primarily focusing on over eating. So taking from the challenge the steps in a slower drawn out process that I hope will have more lasting results. I will spend roughly 3 days on each step:

Now I'm cheating a little here because I've been thinking about why I feel like eating when I'm not hungry and been aware of when I'm over eating and in general trying to curb my behaviour. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on until last night was that when I don't overeat I feel like I'm missing something. It's unreal to think that I'm so dependent on the feeling of being over full, which in reality doesn't feel good.

So over the next three weeks I'm focusing on curbing over eating! I will not feel like I'm going to pop from dinner. I will not feel indigestion because I ate too much of something greasy. I will stop and think and feel.

Will you join me in eating only what you need for the next 3 weeks? 

How I cook Roast Beef in the Slow Cooker

I don't generally follow a recipe I just toss stuff in the pot and cook till it's done... when I lived closer to work I'd leave it on low for the am, go home at lunch and crank it up to high then eat straight after work, mmmmmm!

Slow Cooker Roast Beef

2 lb Roast

Garlic

Salt

Pepper

a few medium sized potatoes peeled and chopped to bite size

Beef broth

Whatever veg you have on hand

Throw it all in the slow cooker in the am, set the timer (outlet timer or if you have one on your slow cooker) to about 5 hours before you plan on eating/getting home.

Gravy?

Remove meat & veg & potatoes

Pour juices into the largest diameter pot you have and bring to boil

While waiting for it to boil mix 1 teaspoon cornstarch in a jar and fill with cold water.

Close jar and shake the shit out of it

Once the juices have boiled slowly pour the cornstarch water in while mixing

Mix for a bit while it's heating until it thickens

If after 5 mins it's not thick repeat the cornstarch. Actually make that 3 minutes.

Meal Planning 2

I've prepared a second week of meals for my menu plan! My next challenge might be seeing if I can program a gadget on here that let's you build your own weekly meal plan and have it produce a menu? That might be beyond my technological capabilities but we shall see, perhaps I'll investigate next week!

So without furthur ado, week 2:

Monday: Honey Mustard Chicken

Tuesday: Lettuce Wrapped Hamburgers (This one is pretty self explanatory but I'll post my recipe shortly)

Wednesday: Trout & Pan Fried Veg

Thursday: Crustless Quiche

Friday: Chickpea, Tuna, Tomato, Feta salad, yeah I add Tuna


Groceries

Monday:

Plain Mustard

Dijon

Honey

Olive Oil

Onion

Garlic

Chicken

Salt & pepper

Rosemary (fresh)

Tuesday:

Ground Beef

Egg

Spices

Vegetables (onion, peppers, mushrooms)

Wednesday:

Trout

Salt & pepper

maple syrup

Soya sauce

butter

lime juice & zest

chives

Thursday:

Eggs

Real Bacon

Broccoli

Cheese (mmmm)

Spinach

Carrot

Friday:

Chickpea

Feta

Cherry Tomatoes

Tuna

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Oregano

Salt & pepper

Meal Planning 1

At my work there are a lot of young male engineers who's diet mainly consists of whatever can be removed from the freezer and cooked in a toaster oven or microwave. Heck, in university a healthy meal for me was sitting down to some tostitos, salsa and sour cream (veggies, protein and starch!)!! But after school I started learning how to cook. Initially I dabbled with bottles of butter chicken sauce and just added chicken and veggies and rice but progressively I tried new recipes.

One day a colleague and I were talking and he said he'd love it if someone sat down and told him what to cook every night and what to buy at the grocery store. This got me to thinking about my own erratic meal planning whatever I was doing. So I started making meal plans for my week to guarantee healthy eating and push some prep to the weekend when I had more time. I did this for about a month when the same colleague told me he was still eating at McDonald's. He's pretty fit, he does cross fit thrice per week but wasn't getting all that much fitter! As well, we all know you can't outrun your fork.

I started to electronify my meal plans and put them on google docs so he could use the same meal plans I did and hopefully stop eating at McDonalds *puke*. Not that I'm full on against McDs, they have great coffee and it's hard to make an egg mcmuffin all that bad for you. But not every meal of every day....

So here are the five meals and below that is your materials required, or what some might call a grocery list:

Monday: Salmon & Asparagus foil wrap BBQ/Oven

Tuesday: Cauliflower sauce & brown rice pasta

Wednesday: Meatloaf

Thursday: Paleo Spaghetti, can replace tomato sauce w/ pesto when on sale

Friday: Slow cooker roast beef (I'll post the recipe for this shortly)

Groceries

Monday:

Salmon

Dijon

Honey

Horseradish

Asparagus

Olive Oil

Tuesday:

Cauliflower

Brown Rice Pasta

Garlic Cloves

Vegetable Broth

Butter

Milk

Wednesday:

Ground Beef

Potato

Carrot

Cheese

Ketchup

Egg

Spices

Thursday:

Spaghetti Squash

Salt & Pepper

Olive Oil

Spaghetti Sauce or Pesto

Ground Beef

Vegetables for sauce like mushrooms, bell peppers, onions

Friday:

Roasting Beef

Potato

Veggies

Beef Broth

Cornstarch

Garlic Cloves

Salt & Pepper

Ice Cream (kidding.)

18 Weeks of Crop Share - Week 3

Hey everybody!

So rather than just sharing what we got in our food box each week I've decided instead to share what we did with some of the items in our food box :)

The first and least complicated was lunch on Tuesday:

We had a somewhat traditional European meal of smoked havarti, spicy cherico and spelt bread (and some butter for the bread). The bread was from our food box but it was all delicious!!

Next I whipped up a Strawberry Mint Salad:

Check out the hyperlink above for ingredients and directions!

The next one was made by Alexandre, he put together a Kale soup of sorts. I'll do my best to describe each picture but to be honest my largest participation in this was chopping ingredients as they came and consuming the end product :D 

Fry the garlic and either oil or butter!

Add the onions to fry!

Cut the stem out of the kale and chop it up, toss it in the pot with the garlic, onion and butter.

Chop the tomatoes, garlic scales and green onion, while the kale cooks

Add the broth to the pot!

Add the tomatoes, garlic scapes and onion to the pot :) 

Not sure what was put in the blender... more to follow on this one! I'm certain there were white navy beans in there and some other kind of white beans... and their juices from the cans, maybe that's it? 

Pour the contents of the blender into the pot, mmmm needed a bigger pot since he doubled the recipe!

Last step: ENJOY! I think this is the recipe he used :) 

How do you try new things and incorporate them into your meals? What's your favourite recent new find? 

Romance in The Food Box

It was a Monday night. Alexandre arrived and instantly you could feel the romance in the air. He approached the Fat Chance Farmstead stand and locked eyes with Josh and Josh said "we have some flowers for your food box this week" and Alexandre melted! Ok, not really but there was some romance in our food box this week :D

This week we got some repeats from last week (which is darn awesome because that stuff is golden - strawberries? mmmmmmm) and some new stuff! Alexandre had to go pick it up himself this week so I didn't get a chance to visit but he picked us up some oven roasted pizza which they'll be doing every other week now which is awesome for Monday night dinners ;) I'd show you a picture but when there was two bites of the pizza left we said "oh man, we should have taken a picture!" At which point Alexandre took a picture but it doesn't look much so I'll spare you.... 

Now for what we got this week, it seems like more than last week so we better start mowing down instantly!

We got flowers, a loaf of spelt bread, a kohlrabi, spinach, kale, garlic stems, shallots, did I mention the pretty flowers?, strawberries and aragula. 

Now last week they recommended a salad dressing for us so we basically had green onion and aragula salad (creative I know!) with the following dressing. It was DELICIOUS!

1/4 c Balsamic Vinaigrette

3 T Olive Oil

1 T Maple Syrup

Yummy :D 

Are you getting hungry yet? What do you do with a kohlrabi? 

My Boyfriends Crepe Birthday Cake for 29 years!!

It's coming up on my boyfriends 29th birthday so annually he organizes a birthday camping trip with his friends and I organize our families to come over for some cake! I got all my duds in order early on this one, I made the facebook event a month ago so no one would have an excuse to miss it :) Something I noticed a couple days ago was that I made it for 5 pm. Although not inherently bad for a Friday evening I get off work at 4:30 and home is a half hours drive which means no prep time. I'll have to start earlier so I can leave earlier, oh well!

But this year we looked at cakes and he decided (slash was told, whatever) that he wanted me to make a crepe cake! So I looked at some recipes online and settled on a layered cake. This is the plan: three layer consisting of crepes, healthy nutella (experiment of almond butter, cocoa and honey) and coconut whipped cream.

I started with the crepes. I found a recipe online and started substituting a few things and before I knew it I wasn't really following the recipe anymore... oops! So here's the ingredients before I decided to try a healthy nutella:

For the crepes I started by adding the following to a bowl and whisking it with my immersion blenders whisk attachment:

1 c unbleached flour

2 T honey

2 eggs

1/2 c milk

1/2 t vanilla

Double yoke :o

Whisked till it was bubbly!

Then I slowly added another 1 c milk (I used 2%) while I whisked and then 1 t melted butter.

From here I prepared my cooking accoutrements:

Crepe pan (thanks mom!), spatula (later switched to a smaller one because this one didn't fit into the pan under the edge of the crepe) and a plate to receive cooked crepes!

I used about a third of a cup of batter each time, no oil since it's no stick ( oil just makes it difficult to spread the batter!!) and set the temp slightly lower than what you use for pancakes. Normal is 5/10 on the dial for me so 4 is perfect for spreading the batter before it starts to cook too thick.

Once your crepe starts looking brown on the edges like this one it's time to flip. Less than 2 minutes later I took the crepe off heat. I ended with a lovely stack of crepes:

From there I started on the "nutella". 

I used the following ingredients all mixed together:

2 c almond butter 

3 T cocoa

2.5 T honey

It turned out pretty good, just a little dry tasting and it looked sort of like chocolate icing:

So then I started on the whipped cream. It took some trial and error on the coconut milk but essentially I needed to find coconut milk with only two ingredients and no preservatives or emulsifiers and then leave it in the fridge 24 hours. One can seemed to separate more than the other but oh well!

I got my blender out and blended and blended and blended and when I tasted it it didn't taste so awesome so I added some vanilla powder. In case your not familiar with vanilla powder this stuff is awesome, it's made from ground vanilla beans according to the google but I think this stuff also had some sweetener in it:

This made the initial taste sweet and vanilla-y but the after taste was still that strong over powering coconut that just leaves your taste buds in shock. So we decided it would ruin the cake and the only other alternative I had on hand was knock off cool whip (this is the night before the party and I have to work all day the next day). 

Needless to say the "nutella" was too thick and the crepes kept tearing and the dessert whip melted so my cake turned into a souped sandwich in an aweful hurry and at that point I had to admit my boyfriend had good reason to suggest I pick up a box of cake mix for a back up. I forgot to take a picture of the whole cake with the sparkler # 29 on top but here's a picture of what was left. It was a hit:

Saturday morning though I woke up and used that "nutella" warmed up a bit with some defrosted frozen fruit and some cool whip and made myself a bangin' breakfast! Add a cuppa with some Bailey's and I was cruisin :) Not a complete loss!

Have you ever gotten really excited and into a recipe only for it not to work the way you intended? 

Our First Food Box!!

June 16th marked the first pick up day for our food box from Fat Chance Farmstead!! If you missed my previous post or I didn't explain it there we paid 600$ up front and then for 18 weeks starting on June 16th we pick up a box of fresh produce and a loaf of spelt bread. The fist one is special though for many reasons. The first is we got maple syrup, yay!! I love maple syrup. The second is we got some plants to put in our own garden. Now that might be a project I tackle tonight and I'll show you pictures, but it's essentially a 4' x 4' weed patch right now...

So here's our first crop share box:

So in this box we got the following:

Shallots

Arugula

Some more green shit....

Strawberries

Lemon Balm

Oregano 

Seedlings: Cherry Tomatoes and Tomatoes described as fuzzy like peaches, and Ground Cherries

Maple Syrup

Spelt Bread

Looks yummy eh? 

Have you received your first bunch of a crop share yet for this year? Is it enough considering it will increase as the year 

Blueberry cheesecake stuffed strawberries with chocolate drizzle

It's getting on strawberry season here in South Eastern Ontario and strawberries are going on sale in every grocery store! So I figured why not give this delicious recipe a facelift? The recipe I based this on is here! But I decided to change it up a bit plus I always have leftover cheesecake because I don't cut out as much of the strawberry, that part is yummy too :) So here are my ingredients: 

Vanilla, confectioners sugar, cream cheese, strawberries and graham crumbs. 

I used 76% chocolate chips for the drizzle because that's what I had in the cupboard but as my boyfriend says, "milk chocolate is the best, you should use that next time," so I guess it's up to your personal preference. You could even use white chocolate but my personal taste is dark :) Oh no, where's the jam? Trust me, I used jam, mommy made blueberry jam!

So I started out by mixing the entire package of cream cheese with 1 teaspoon of vanilla with the beaters. Then I added 1 Tablespoon of blueberry jam. You can put more or less jam depending on how flavourful your jam is. Mine was pretty flavourful and not super sweet. If your jam is also sweet make sure you add the confectioners sugar a bit at a time and taste it so you don't over sweeten it! 

Once this mixture is ready to rock spoon it into a regular lunch bag:

You can do this now or later but you'll need to cut off the corner so you can pipe it. Before cutting the tip I recommend working the cream cheese because mine was still pretty cold and I busted a leak out the side that needed taping because I had to squeeze so hard :S Ooops! 

Next you're going to want to prepare your strawberries. Hold the knife at about a 45 degree angle and slice around the stem:

You'll notice as you cut that there's a bit of a hollow in the center of the strawberry, this is where your cheesecake will go:

Once the strawberries are ready pour some graham crumbs into a bowl for dipping after you've piped in the cheesecake:

Grab your lunch bag and fill those strawberries! Now they don't need to look all that pretty because you're just going to mash them into the graham crumbs which should flatten the tops nicely.

I always have leftovers so I just tape up the cut corner and toss it in the freezer. The filling is always handy to have on hand in case you need to whip up something to bring to a social event last minute!

Once you have all your strawberries filled and dipped you're ready to start the chocolate. 

There's about a quarter cup of chocolate here, not that I measured or skimped in any way, this is chocolate we're talking about here. Feel free to use more, worst case you have more to lick out of the bowl after you're done drizzling.  

I heated mine in the microwave, a double boiler or a metal mixing bowl over a pot with an inch of water would have worked perfectly as well. If you do it in the mic make sure you heat at intervals of 20 to 30 seconds, the sugar heats pretty quickly and the edges will burn while the center is still unheated if you let it go too long. After each interval mix it up, here's how mine looked after the first interval:

After the chocolate is melted take your spoon and drizzle it over your perfection!

And then of course devour it :) 

What other variations would you like? Would you like a healthier version? Keep an eye out because that's my next plan :D 

Ingredients in the raw:

1 pkg cream cheese

1 T blueberry jam

1 t vanilla

1/4 c confectioners sugar

1 pint strawberries

1/4 c dark chocolate

Farm Share Life!

I don't really have a whole lot of content on this topic yet but I'm plum excited and it's getting closer :) Mid-June we're going to get some maple syrup and our farm share in an organic farm will start to roll in. Once a week we'll go pick up a box full of fruits and veggies along with a fresh baked spelt loaf, mmmmm! The place we're going with this year is called Fat Chance Farmstead:

I'll be sure to post pictures of our first box come June :) 

Are you part of a farm share this year? Have you done one before? 

Meat Muffins! Deliciousness in Cute Little Muffin Shape :)

I like meatloaf, but as an adult I was always apprehensive about making it myself. It takes almost an hour to cook, it's a lot of beef, and when you look up a recipe they always use fillers like bread crumbs and crackers and yuck! So I guess when it came down to it I wasn't crazy about a lump of meat but rather the ketchup I doused it with..

 I got a recipe from someone I worked with in Calgary and of course it was a really delicious recipe!  But after only making it once I lost it... but I remembered some of the ingredients.

Now I could tinkered with the ingredients here and there but again, the large mass of meat takes ages to bake... *sigh* Until one day I had found a genius Pinterest idea! Make your meat loaf in muffin tins! So I put those ingredients together:

There's only 1 lb of beef in the photos but you'll need two for this recipe :)

And tossed it in the muffin tin:

It cooked so fast, it was a dream :) And now I can have meat loaf much faster! Plus it freezes great with some parchment on top to keep it closed up. And now for the recipe! Feel free to tinker with these ingredients, it's not a touchy recipe, and nothing but the garlic is so strong that if you add more it will overpower the recipe.

Ingredients (Yields around 24 muffins):
2 T Ketchup
1 t No Salt Seasoning (Costco Kirkland Brand Spice Mix)
1/4 t Salt
1 t Parsley
2 cloves garlic pressed
1/2 small onion (any colour)
2 large carrots (grated)
3 small potatoes (grated)
1 c grated cheese (any kind)
2 lb lean ground beef

Combine in a bowl, mix it up with your hands and press blobs into a non-stick muffin tin. You may want to Crisco/pam/coconut oil your non-non-stick pan but consider the grade of your beef and how much oils are already in the meat that will secrete.

Cook for about 30 minutes at 350 F or until your meat thermometer reads around 165 F in the center of a puck.

Another note, if you freeze it make sure it's completely thawed before cooking, the boyfriend learned the hard way that cooking partially defrosted meatloaf leads to the outside burning by the time the center is cooked and you're left with shrivelled up little pucks. I'll save you the visual on that one. You're welcome.

And Voila! The finished product, enjoy!

What do you put in your meatloaf?