Paleo Pork Chops Dinner

Our dinner last night evolved from our monthly CSA drop off Wednesday. The first picture is from our meat from the CSA this month. It's a surprise box full of goodies every month. I have noticed we get really excited for our pick up day! This month our box was full of lots of pork, which I wouldn't usually buy if I was grocery shopping before. I always had this fear associated with pork since I was little; I remember how my whole family got food poising from it. It is amazing how we tag memories with food. 

So lately I have been recently experimenting with some new pork recipes. I found this one last night that was delicious! I added some of my own touches to it of course.

For the Pork Chops

Ingredients:

2-4 lamp chops ( I used 2 boneless skinless pork chops)

1/4 cup olive oil (or enough to cover pork chops)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 shallot, minced

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp cayenne pepper(optional, we like things spicy at our house)

sea salt/pepper to your taste

1)Combine olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, shallot, oregano, salt, and pepper in 1 gallon zip lock bag.

2)Rinse pork chops under cool water, pat dry, and place in the zip lock bag. 

3) Toss the chops until evenly coated with olive oil and seasonings. 

4)Marinate in the refrigerator for 1 to 24 hours (your preference)

5)Preheat grill to high heat (or your broiler)

6) Grill chops 5-6 minutes per side(I cooked ours in the broiler on low for a 1/2 hour to cook till no pink showed)

While the Pork Chops were cooking I also grilled up some pineapple with cinnamon to compliment the chops. I put a few slices of pineapple on a cookie sheet and lightly coated them with some ground cinnamon. They turned out delicious and were a great addition. 

We cheated with dinner last night and had corn and cheese on our salad. No worries we enjoyed our delicious dinner!We are completely happy with our small cheats, knowing that they are healthier options to  our old diets.

Enjoy!!    

Our Latest Dinner..Rainbow Trout

We recently picked up some fresh Rainbow Trout from the Farmers Market. I personally have never experimented with any sort of fish other then Tilapia which is a favorite in our house, Salmon occasionally, and Cod. So I found a website called punchfork with a ton of trout recipes. I then procedded to let Caleb picked out one that he wanted to try. I was nervous about making it but it turned out delicious! 

The recipe is as follows

Ingredients

We used one fresh Rainbow Trout from the Farmers Market. 

4 Tabelspoons of unsalted pasterized butter

A Handful of Walnuts

Half of a Lemon

Tarragon

Parsley

Heat your oven to 450. While your oven is preheating prepare your fish. Put the skin side on a cookie sheet or whatever you prefer to cook your fish on. Sprikle fish to your tasting with Sea Salt, pepper, Tarragon, and parsley. Slice the lemon and place it on top of the fish. Place in oven and cook for 10-12 minutes ro until the fish flakes easily with a fork. 

I also made Asparagus with onions and Garlic cauliflower mashed potatoes with dinner. You will want to start the Cauli Mashed first being that it takes the longest to prepare. 

Cali Mash

Ingredients

1 head of Cauliflower

Garlic 

Chili Powder

sea salt/pepper to taste

5 tablespoons Coconut Milk(can)

1 tablespoon of unsalted pasterized butter or coconut oil

Steam the Cali

Place into a food processor  with all the ingredients. Season it to your liking. I am still playing around with seasonings that I like in the Cali Mash. Sometimes I make it with curry powder too just     depending on what you will be having with it.         

The asaragus and onions is very simple

Wash  your asaragus

snap the ends off 

pace in a pyrex dish 

Slice your onion

Add it to the Asaragus 

Coat theAsaragus and onion with olive oil, sea salt and pepper. 

Cook in oven on 400 for 15 minutes. 

Enjoy!

If anyone tries this recipe please leave me comments and ideas on things that I can improve on. 

 

Our First Paleo Meal

Our Frist Paleo Meal consisted of trying a skirt steak for the first time from our first CSA meat dropoff. We had no idea of what to expect, but none the less it was delicious! It was our first recipe from our new cookbook Make It Paleo. The recipe was calld Skirt Steak with chive butter.

We also had sauted cabbage and a salad with some hard boiled eggs almond slices. Our first meal was delicious. We have created this whole new quality time in the kitchen while making healthy delicious food! Life couldn't be any better

The recipe is as follows

       Ingredients
      *1lb skirt steak
      * Salt to taste
      * 3 tbsp unsalted pasture butter, room temperature
      * 1/4 tsp salt
      * 1 tbsp chopped chives

    Prep Time: 15 min
    Cook Time: 6 min
    Serves 2-4

  Process
1) Preheat gril to high heat. We live in an apartment on the seond floor so we use our broiler a lot. It gives it the same effect.
2) Rinse skirt steak under cold water, and pat dry with a paper towel.
3) Cut skirt steak into 3 pieces of equal length.
4) Sprinkle each side generously with sea salt.
5) Grill for 3 minutes per side.
6) Remove from grill and alow to rest for 5 minutes.
7) While steak is resting, whisk butter, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and chives with a fork.
8) Slice steak against the grain. Top with chive butter and serve.

The sauteed cabbage is very simple.  Heat up some coconut oil in a pan. Slice up the cabbage and add it to the pan. Cook in til it is tender. BAM there you have a very simple starter Paleo meal!

Welcome To Our Everyday Paleo Adventure!

Welcome to our Paleo Adventure we have embraced in our lives. My boyfriend and I currently live in Madison, Wisconsin. We went to our first Farmer's Market last summer, which began the change in our lives. It wasn't in till a few months ago that we fully embraced a complete new way to eat.
   
 I took a Business Ethics class and began to question the way companies operate. Most companies have horrible ethical practices. After a lot of case studies on Monsanto and other food companies I began to question where our food that we consumed with very little question came from. I had begun to learn about the effect of pesticides and other harmful things like GMO's (Genetically Modified Food) to our bodies. I came home from class one night and was telling Caleb my boyfriend all about how unhealthy our diets really were. We decided to research our options on healthier ways that would benefit the both of us.

 At the time Caleb was trying this awful diet of what I called the eggs, chicken, and rice diet. I was tired of trying to cook two meals every night with all of the mess and dishes that came with it. Plus I am one of those people that gets very bored eating the same thing day in and day out. I love experimenting in the kitchen with new recipes. We have begun throwing all the big Holiday Parties at our house and love entertaining our friends with great food and company.

 I had heard from other friends in the Madison area that the area offers CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture). You pay them a monthly fee and they deliver meat or veggies to you. The best part is your supporting your local community, eating healthy, and know where you food comes from. We didn't realize how many farms we had options to choose from. We ended up going with a recommendation from teacher for a farm that delivered to the coffee shop down the street from our house for an extra $5 a month. Caleb's work ended up reimbursing us the first month of our membership and got a few other people to join the healthy adventure.

Our next adventure began when I had been hearing about Paleo from my friends that do CrossFit. I began to finally look into realizing we had a lot of work to do if we wanted to go down this road. We decided to embrace the change and headed to our local grocery store from some healthier choices. At first it was challenging to shop at the grocery store. We had no idea that coconut flour/oil and almond flour even existed.  Our local grocery store didn't even sell the flour's that we needed. We then embarked on the amazing Whole Foods adventure. That store is amazing, yes expensive but needless to say AMAZING!! They have all of those weird ingredients that you never knew existed!

Once the Farmer's Market opened we made it a new Saturday requirement. We get up on Saturday's and head to the Farmer's Market in the morning and then to Whole Foods for those other ingredients that we need but can't get at our store close to our house. I then bought my first Paleo cookbook called Make It Paleo! Best starter cookbook EVER! Every recipe has pictures and there wasn't a recipe that we didn't like or wouldn't make again. That cookbook made the possibility of switching our diets to eliminate sugar, flour, dairy, and all that other unhealthy stuff a whole heck of a lot easier.

We began to see how our good our bodies felt after eating healthy. We also began to see how our bodies reacted to foods that were not in our diets when we had cheat days. So we made an active effort to fully pursue the Paleo lifestyle. We do have days that we sneak some dairy in our diets like cheese. I mean we do live in the cheese state after all.

So please take the time to follow our blog on our trials and errors in the kitchen while embarking on the Paleo/Primal lifestyle. Our pictures thus far are not the prettiest being that they are only iPhone photo's for now. We do hope to purchase a nice camera in the near future but in till then please bear with the photo's I attempt to take!

Enjoy!!