Rosemary Raisin Crackers

Back around Christmas I was stocking up at Trader Joe's on horrifically unhealthy non-paleo snacks as I was about to get snowed in for a day or so and needed something in my stomach to go with the >=1 bottle of red wine I planned to drink. French onion dip and chips, a variety of cheeses, their pita crackers (which I am obsessed with, so good with some of their brie on top) and a cracker I had never encountered before, Trader Joe's Raisin Rosemary Crisps. The crackers were really good, especially with a bit of blue cheese on top. Alas, they're not so paleo-friendly.

So I was super excited when I came across this recipe from Against All Grain that was inspired by them. I decided they'd be the perfect accompaniment to the country pate and bacon jam I'm serving at my dinner club on Saturday so I set to making a test batch tonight. The original TJ's crackers have a consistency more like a melba toast than an actual cracker and while Against All Grain provides a second recipe using almond pulp that looks like it gets closer to that, I didn't feel like messing with making almond pulp on top of everything else. So, I decided to make a half batch of the ones using blanched flour, as well as a second half batch using the same recipe, but with Bob's Red Mill almond flour/meal, which is courser and still has the almond skins to see which one I liked better. By the way, I left the sunflower seeds out of both batches because I didn't have any.

Having now eaten a large number of crackers, I can say first that these crackers are incredibly easy to make (just toss a few ingredients in your food processor, pulse for a few seconds, roll out, cut and bake). They're also delicious and definitely have the flavor of the TJ's crackers. As for which one I liked better, they're both good and I think which you make depends on what you're looking for. The batch made with the blanched almond flour (I used Honeyville) was more like an actual cracker, with a very firm texture and a great snap when you broke them. No one would ever know those crackers didn't contain regular flour. The ones made with Bob's Red Mill were my preferred cracker though. They weren't as dense and had a better mouthfeel.

The latter didn't require any adjustments to the recipe, they just cooked a bit faster (I also ended up accidentally rolling them a bit thinner so that could have contributed) so I would keep a close eye on them and check them 5-7 minutes in. One other tip - when you roll them, make sure the edges aren't thinner than the rest or the crackers won't cook evenly.

And what's a recipe testing if you don't test the finished products together so I had to try both crackers with the bacon jam. It's a rough life!

Indian Curry Meatballs

I had a hankering for something Indian so I went searching the web for some inspiration. I initially thought I'd take a stab at making one of my favorite eggplant dishes, baingan bharta, but in the end I decided to do my own take on this Curried Meatball recipe from Everyday Paleo.

For the meatballs, I mixed together the following:

1 lb ground turkey (higher fat, not the lean 1% fat)
1 lb ground pork
1/2 c finely diced red onion
1/3 c finely diced, peeled apple (I used my food processor for both this and the onion)
1 egg
2 T curry powder (I used Trader Joe's)
1 t black pepper
~2 t kosher salt

After mixing the ingredients together really well, I scooped up the mixture in large rounded tablespoonfuls, formed them into meatballs and browned them in a nonstick pan with a little coconut oil in two batches:

Once the meatballs were done, I moved them to my 4 qt crockpot and added a little more coconut oil, 1/2 of a medium onion, diced and 1 t of crushed garlic to the pan. Once the aromatics had softened a bit, I added 2 T of curry powder and let that cook for about a minute. Then I added half of a can of tomato paste (about 2 1/2 T), 1 c of pork stock, a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, and a can of full fat coconut milk. Once everything was well blended and the sauce was simmering again, I poured it over the meatballs in the crockpot and set it on high:

You could also easily let the meatballs simmer in the sauce on the stovetop until cooked through, but I was multi-tasking and didn't know when I'd get around to actually eating. When I was ready for dinner, all I needed to do was make some cauliflower rice to serve the curry over. I removed the florets from the stem and rinsed them off, then processed them in my food processor in batches until they were the size of grains of rice:

Make sure you don't overstuff your food processor or you'll end up with mush on the bottom and whole florets on top. You really don't need to pulse long to get the size you need. It also helps to make sure the cauliflower is pretty dry. From there, I only needed to saute some diced shallot in a bit of coconut oil:

then add the "rice", cover and let it steam until it was soft with just a bit of bite left:

I plated the meatballs and sauce over the cauliflower rice in a bowl and that was dinner:

The best part of cauliflower rice, by the way...the fact that you can dig into a bowl of food that feels like a carby indulgence when really you're eating vegetables!

Thanks to my office being closed as a result of the "snow day" I also got my pork belly confited (in lard, how awesome is that?!) and there's a batch of Zenbelly's Bacon Jam in my oven as I type. I can't wait to try it on a bit of apple when it's done! Here's a photo of the belly before it went into the oven:

Even with all of that, I got a lot of work done. Yay for working at home and productive snow days! Did anyone else take advantage of the weather (or lack thereof) to get any cooking done?

Caramelized Turnips

A group of 7 of my friends and I have had a dinner club for many years now. Each month someone different hosts and at the end of each cycle we do a themed dinner where each person makes one small plate and pairs it with a wine. Saturday I'll be hosting again and this time, I've decided to serve an entirely paleo dinner! With Saturday quickly approaching, it was time to get down to some recipe testing. Typically I just use my friends as recipe testers, but in the case of this dish, I was going to be "paleofying" a regular recipe so I wanted to try it out first.

I was looking for a side dish to serve with the confited pork belly I'm making and stumbled across this recipe for Beef Cheek Confit with Caramelized Turnips and decided the turnips sounded like a great choice. So first I melted some fat (I used bacon fat, but you could use ghee or lard) in my cast iron pan over medium heat. While the pan got warm, I peeled and finely diced (about 1/4") 2 small-medium turnips and tossed them into the fat in the pan with a touch of kosher salt:

I cooked them, stirring occasionally until the turnips were nicely browned on all sides, then turned the heat down to medium low and added a large clove of crushed garlic. After the garlic cooked for a few minutes, I added a small amount (about 1/4 c) of pork stock (I will use the confit liquid when I make the dish on Saturday), 1 t of honey, and 1/2 t of coconut aminos and stirred to coat. Once the liquid had cooked a little and formed a glaze on the turnips, the dish was ready:

I plated them up with some leftover ribeye* and brussels sprouts that I had reheated and that was dinner:

The turnips were delicious - very tasty for very little effort. Now I just need to get the brine for the pork belly made and cooled so the belly can brine overnight. Tomorrow is supposed to be a snow day so I'm hoping to confit the pork while I work from home.

*Reheated steak, what? Here's my tip if you're a solo diner, or just want to have steak more than one night in a row. Cut your steak in half and sear both pieces. When the steaks have a nice sear, put one in the oven to finish cooking and immediately put the other in the fridge to cool. The following day, pull it out of the fridge a half an hour to an hour before you want to cook, then throw the steak in a hot oven and cook to your desire temperature (which I sincerely hope is medium rare :P).That way you only have to dirty a pan searing once instead of twice.

Checking out boxes

Sorry, couldn't help myself on the title. When I bought my Living Social for Crossfit Revamped, my plan was to just do the month of Crossfit to give my weight loss and fitness a boost and to finally see what all of the hype was about. I figured I would also pick up some stuff that I could work into my strength training, but never envisioned I'd be willing to spend the money to get a monthly membership. But, as you all know by now, I've drunk the Kool-Aid. I could wax poetic about all of the reasons why, but the bottom line is that I'm much stronger than I was 6 weeks ago. And I want to be even stronger. I want to have the strength to do a kipping pull-up without a resistance band. I want to have the flexibility to do a squat where my butt is practically on the floor. And I want to have the determination to do an Angie.

With that in mind, it's just a matter of figuring out the best place to continue working toward those goals. While I like Revamped, there seems to be a lot of variation in how Crossfit boxes are run and of course there's location and distance to consider so it seems smart to explore my options.

The obvious first choice to explore was the box closest to me, Crossfit Laurel. My overall impressions of the place from what I had seen and heard led me to think this wouldn't be the place for me and I almost didn't go. Thankfully I called this morning and had a surprisingly lengthy conversation with Curtis, one of the owners, who happens to also be an old neighbor of mine! Curtis was as nice as I remembered him and gave me a lot of info that got me thinking about what I should be looking for and what is or isn't important to me. After I've been to a few more places, I'll write a post about it because as awesome as Crossfit is, I think there are some things worth considering before you join a location.

Anyway, to get to the point, everyone that I met today was very welcoming and friendly (and patient addressing my many questions). One of the key differences here that really appeals to me is that part of their intro work with you is determining some baselines so you can gauge your progress later on. When I got to the end of my Whole 30, I realized that it was difficult for me to clearly illustrate to others how much I had improved. Baselines seem like a no brainer to me and I'm now wondering why that wasn't part of my on ramp program at Revamped. To get a better feel for this location, I did sign up for a 3 class pass and one of the things we'll do is get my max weights for a few key lifting moves, like the deadlift.

Today's WOD was the most basic of the benchmark WODs and aptly named "Baseline". Here's what I did in 7 min and 25 sec:

500m row
40 air squats
30 sit-ups
20 hand release push-ups
10 pull-ups

Not a particularly challenging workout for me in and of itself, but there were a few key accomplishments. One is that I've been doing my push-ups from my knees namely because when I started Crossfit, I couldn't do them any other way. As I've progressed I've continued to simply because we often do such a large number that to do them efficiently I felt I still needed to do them from my knees. Today I decided to challenge myself to doing them all from my toes. I had to take a couple of quick rests during the last 7 or so, but I did it with relatively little difficulty!

I've also been working on my kipping pull-ups. It was just last week that I finally got the technique (and had sufficient strength) to do 2 "chained" (ie. in a row), albeit with a resistance band. I decided to do all 10 with the same strength resistance band today, knowing I would certainly need to break them up. But again, I finished them with relative ease and I accomplished a sort of PR in that I was able to chain 4 pull-ups together!

Two lessons I've learned recently:
1. Don't underestimate myself.
2. Practice makes perfect. I have been practicing both kipping and strict pull-ups after each WOD pretty consistently for the last week and a half and it's certainly paid off. On Saturday, I started focusing on tricep work as well. Gotta' start getting that ring work in!

And on that note, I'm off to order myself a pull up bar! Anyone want to try the baseline WOD themselves? If so, post your time in the comment section when you're done and share what was easy or difficult. Make sure to check out the link to ensure that you're using proper technique and not "cheating" yourself on any of the movements.

Curried Butternut Squash Pork Soup

Yesterday I picked up a huge order from my favorite pork producer, Bill at Forest Fed. I'll spare you the lecture of how commercially raised pork is not only subpar in terms of nutritional value, but is probably the worst of the worst in terms of inhumane living conditions and just say that if you want the absolute best of the best in terms of heritage pork that is raised in an environmentally sustainable and humane way (these are the happiest of happy pigs right up until they get the axe so to speak), then Forest Fed is it. And it's the best tasting pork I've ever had. So I took advantage of Bill's monthly local drop and stocked up on shoulder, fresh belly, cured bacon, ground pork and sausage, and brats.

A friend was coming over for dinner that night and I remembered a curry soup my friend Christie had described that used ground sausage. Since I also had an open can of coconut milk that needed to be used up, also called for in the soup I figured it was a perfect choice.

Christie had given me some general guidelines for what she does, which I used as a starting point. Here's what I ended up doing:

I browned a pound of ground Italian sausage in a little bit of coconut oil until it had good color, then I added a can of full fat coconut milk, a can of organic butternut squash puree, a cup of homemade pork stock, and about a tablespoon of fish sauce. I had bought fresh ginger at the store, but it somehow didn't make it home with me, so I also added some crushed ginger from the jar I keep in my fridge for such emergencies. Once that was simmering nicely, I added one chopped yellow bell pepper, one chopped onion, and about 1/2-2/3 lb of quartered button mushrooms. I simmered the soup for about 15-20 minutes, seasoned it to taste, then served it with lime wedges.

Bad blogger that I am, I did not remember to take a photo, but it was a lovely, easy to prepare hearty soup and it paired nicely with a grenache blanc/albarino blend from Lone Madrone that I picked up on my trip to Paso Robles last spring. This time you don't have to take my word for it as my friend went back for seconds despite knowing we had another course to eat!

Tomorrow I'm dropping in on a class at the Crossfit box that's actually in my town. Incidentally it's owned by 2 brothers my age who used to be my next door neighbors so that's kind of fun. I get the impression that the space is pretty small and I may not love it, but I figure I need to check it out and see for myself. I'll report back tomorrow evening.

Another Day, Another Solo WOD

So my hope was to drop in on a class at another nearby Crossfit box today. I really like Crossfit Revamped, but it's not the most convenient in terms of distance/location and Revamped was closed all day today. Unfortunately the box in Silver Spring was holding their winter games and the other 2 locations were doing WODs that involved lots of things I can't do right now like double unders. (Have I mentioned my doctor thinks I have a stress fracture in my tibia? What, I left that out? Oops. :P)

So it was another day of working out on my own at my old gym. Here's what I did:

1500 m row & stretching to warm up

WOD
6 Rounds For Time of:
12 Wall balls (10 lbs)
9 kettlebell swings (35 lbs)
6 burpees

For practice: tricep dips & handstand push-ups

Yeah, you read that right. I voluntarily put burpees in my workout. It was a relatively small number so I figured I could manage and I'll be honest, they're getting "easier" for me. I also think it's time for me to move up to the 14 lb Rx weight on wall balls, but the 10 lb ball is the biggest my gym has. Still, it was a killer workout. 17 minutes and 40 seconds to finish all 6 rounds and I am SORE AS HECK!! But yay me, for seriously kicking my own ass, twice!

WODing Solo

I was looking for a photo on my computer today when I came across this:

Does anyone remember it? It's the banner I made as motivation for the blog I started the last time I wanted to get into shape. Damn, I was in good shape back when those were taken (ie. 5 years ago)!

Anywho, today my box was closing early because everyone is headed to the Arnold Classic (as in Arnold Schwarzenegger Classic) so I decided I'd WOD on my own at the gym by my office.

I warmed up with some good mornings, air squats, v-ups, and push ups. Then I decided to work on my chest press for the strength part of my workout. Remember a few posts ago when I said I hadn't done a good job of getting a baseline when I started Crossfit? Well it turns out that chest press was the strength workout on my first "real" day of Crossfit, after I completed the 4 basics classes. The format was 3-3-3-3-3-3. Anytime you see the x-x-x, you do x number of reps per set, adding weight between each set. That first time, I started with the lowest weight I could, the 35 lb women's bar and since I was unable to add weight each time, I repeated a few weights. In the end, I did 35-40-40-45-45 and I needed assistance on the last rep of the last set.

So today, when I discovered the lightest bar in my gym was 45 lbs I got worried, but I decided to give it a shot. The bar alone didn't feel all that bad so I lined up some small plates and got to work. When I was done, I had done 45-50-55-60-65-70 and I didn't feel I had maxed out so I asked someone to spot me and added another 5 lbs. I did need an assist on the last 2 reps at 75, but at that point it was all a bonus!

After that, I got down to the WOD. Here's what I did:

AMRoundsAP in 15 min of:
9 deadlifts (90 lbs)
12 hand release push-ups
15 push presses (40 lbs)
18 sit-ups

I managed 4 rounds minus 8 sit-ups (which I finished anyway) and I assure you, I worked just as hard as I would have at my box. (Does anyone else laugh every time I say "my box"? Yes, my sense of humor is sometimes childish). I finished up by working on my kipping pull-ups and then headed home. Tomorrow I plan to check out a new place since my box (heh) is completely closed. It will be interesting to see if the vibe is different!