Menu for 2/27-3/6

Menu for this coming week.  Thursday night is gaming and dinner at my friend Susie's house, so I won't have to worry about that, and Friday, I know I'm taking my car to the shop, which is near the Chipotle, so I'll walk over there for lunch, and then epic day of beauty  and frivolity with my friends Wendy and Nichole, and I'm fairly certain we're going to have delivery.  Fun week ahead! 

Recipes will be provided when I know they're good.

Friday:

Dinner: Chicken with mango avocado salsa

Saturday lunch: chicken

Dinner: pork with roasted beets

Sunday lunch: pork leftovers

Dinner: Beef enchiladas

Monday lunch leftovers

Dinner: Fried Chicken and baked sweet potato wedges

Tuesday lunch leftovers

Dinner Meat Loaf Muffins and collard greens

Wednesday lunch leftovers

Dinner Steak and potato

Thursday leftover

Dinner at Susies

Friday lunch Chipotle

Dinner at Nicholes

Brunch! Now with Pictures!

I got a spiffy new phone, the LG G3, and its got an awesome camera, so more pictures!  Also, I downloaded the Blogger app, so I can post directly from my phone!  Double win!

However, this post is NOT posted from my phone, because I can't figure out how to add pictures on the app.  I am not smart when it comes to technology. Just leave me in the kitchen, and everyone will be happy.

ANYWAY,  its a day off for me, and grocery shopping is tomorrow, so today is all about leftovers. I have a few odds and ends that are made to come together, so breakfast hash it is!  Now, breakfast hash can be anything.  Have some leftover roasted veggies? Throw 'em in!  Some leftover mashed potatoes?  In they go!  Taco meat? Heck yeah!  Pork loin?  Absolutely!  All meats! All veggies!  I've been known to chuck cole slaw in the mess of an epic Leftover Hash.  Anything. Can. Go. In. Leftover hash.

My brunch does not look like a Leftover hash.  This looks like a traditional sausage and peppers with potatoes.  But honestly, the spirit of it was Leftover hash.

I had a potato that had passed its useful stage, but I cut off the offending tree bits growing from it, and chopped her up.  There was half of a large onion just languishing in the crisper, begging to be taken out of its misery.  And one last orange bell pepper from the sale last week. All together in a bowl and seasoned with salt and pepper.

look, pretty potatoes, onion, and peppers!  so very pretty..

                                           



 After heating up the pan, sauteed that mix until everything softened a bit.  Then I took a few mushrooms that hadn't been used in a recipe this week, cut them in half, and added them.

For the Record, theWoodchuck Raspberry Hard Cider is pretty good. I'm not sure why the housemate keeps it by the stove, but I don't judge.
However, the Woodchuck Raspberry Chocolate Hard Cider was Off The Hook.  So good.

Also, looking at this, I see how dirty the stove knobs are.  Sorry about that. I'll take care of that today.  Damn natural lighting!

such a pretty mixture of tastiness.  so pretty...

  

And then I sliced up the sausage, and thew in the rest of the onions and peppers from last nights dinner. At this point, it smells delicious.

 Add a couple eggs sunny side up, and a delicious brunch is had!  Or scrambled eggs, or poached eggs, or no eggs at all.  Hey, it's your life.  Life it how you want!

Right, so it'll take a few shots to perfect the pictures on blog thing.  I'm going to have fun with it. 

Now, promise me some weekend day, when you have to feed people, and you have lots of leftovers, make a breakfast hash.  let me know what you put in it.  I promise, it will be delicious!
                                               

Can't cook every day!

Last night, I planned on grilling some chicken breast (in truth, I got chicken tenders because they were cheaper) and roasting some brussel sprouts.  In actuality, I worked until 9pm, and by the time I got home, it was almost 10pm, and I just didn't feel like cooking.  But I was starving.  Enter food delivery!
I order Chicken Pad Thai.  Pad Thai is made with rice noodles, and therefore wheat free (generally).  I also got some sushi.  And hell, because my order was a certain amount, I also got some cheese 'crabmeat' fried wontons for free.  Yay.
Out of the whole order, the worst of it were the wontons, of course.  Fried wheat with cream cheese (I'm still dubious there is ever crabmeat in them, however).  And you can't eat fried wontons without that crazy food colored and full of HFCS sweet and sour sauce!
Yeah, so wontons and sushi for dinner, with a taste of the pad thai, and then pad thai for lunch today.
I'll cook the chicken friday.
Tonight, I sauteed an onion and 3 peppers (orange, red, green) sausages.  Very good.

Got a new phone.  It has a "health" program on there.  Based on my height (5'4), it claims my goal weight should be 122.  Has it met me?

Pro Tip for fruit salad

I find that mixing some vanilla extract (about 1 tsp) and a TB honey in 1/3 cup fruit juice (orange juice is awesome, but so is pineapple juice) makes a really wonderful dressing for a fruit salad.  Also, helps to keep it fresh.  Win-win!

Some darn good salmon.

So tonight, I had salmon on the menu, and I wasn't terribly excited.
Last week, I had salmon, and it was very very meh, and made me feel terrible.  I think it made me feel terrible because I ate the whole huge filet.  Overeating at meals is a definite IBS trigger for me.

Today, I wanted to find a way to nom up the salmon, so my belly would be happy and full and my tastebuds excited.
I have my menu planned out for the week, and I have all the foods I need for various dishes in the appropriate staging area-either the fridge, freezer, or pantry.  Because I knew I'd need the shrimp for my lunch tomorrow (The menu says shrimp deviled eggs, but avocados were on sale, so I'm totally doing an avocdo shrimp deviled eggs.  See?  I'm flexible), and I knew I was doing a stuffed tilapia on Friday, but figured the seafood I bought for that would be too much for one meal.  So I whipped the stuff up tonight, and shmeared it on the salmon.  Holy mother of monkeys, that was awesome.  I'll definitely post the recipe on Friday, after I stuff the tilapia.  But seriously.  I ate half the filet, with some green beans.  And I'm satiated, but I want to eat that other half.  It was so good!  I won't though. Because I hate feeling like crap.

My philosophy on food is basically this: eat whole foods, and eat locally. 
My current eating plan is strong on the whole foods, terrible on the local.  Avocados? In February?  Ah, well.

Lazy Day

Didn't work today, due to my car and the snow, and all that.  So, it was a lazy day involving sleeping in and then making dinner.  Tonight, I made fried chicken, or as Nom Nom Paleo calls it, Cracklin chicken.  The recipe I loosely followed is here: http://nomnompaleo.com/post/74180911762/cracklin-chicken
I also steamed 2 yellow potatoes and 1 sweet potato, then chucked 'em in my mixer (have I waxed poetic about my Kitchen-Aid 600 series Pro mixer yet?  She's brick red, and her name is Gudrun.  I luffs her) with a chunk of butter, and some salt, and made some smashed and mashed potatoes.   I kept the skins on the yellows, but peeled the sweet.  Good balance.
And then I steamed cooked some broccoli and spinach. Added butter.  Butter is great.

I decided I wanted some cream gravy, but I am both lactose intolerant, and not currently eating wheat.  So, I just mixed some corn starch with some plain almond milk, and cooked that with the leftover chicken grease (which was coconut oil, btw). Flavor was..unusual.  Mushrooms in that would have made a spectacular mushroom gravy, but I thought of that too late.  It certainly accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish (gravy for my chicken), but definitely needs some tweaking.

Yup, I'm doing a lot of tweaking.  Someday, a great cookbook is going to come out of this..

Oh, and the oatmeal, I made, which was apple and dried apricot and dried cherries. Used almond milk, and brown sugar.  Used half the brown sugar of what I used white sugar last week.  And now that I've been eating it, I think I can safely half the sugar even more, and be fine.  That's great!
And the oatmeal is so nummy. I might try putting pb in it again next week, and see what happens.  The extra protein is nice, but since I'm paring the oatmeal with the egg muffins, its not absolutely necessary.

Hope your day is going well!

Days like this...

Today was an extraodinarily stressful day.  It involved snow, terrible snow, and a car that's still stuck in snow, and no longer has working windshield wipers.

I don't have myself on a particular diet, per se, I'm just trying to limit my wheat, grains, sugar, and known IBS troublemakers.  That being said, I've been exclusively wheat free for one week.  And even on this stressful day, I still made myself dinner, and don't really crave anything I shouldn't eat.
This is a definite start.

Tonights dinner was pork chops and a tomato and cucumber salad.  The chops got slightly overcooked, but I dealt with it.  The salad had tomato, cucumber, and an avocado, with some italian dressing.  There wasn't enough leftover for lunch tomorrow, but I have plenty of other leftovers to take care of that tomorrow.  I'm off work tomorrow (see snow, stuck car..did I mention the car is 3 miles from my house? Yeah, stress.) and tomorrow is fried chicken.  Yes!

weekly menu Feb 20-26

I have my meals planned out for the week!

Breakfasts will be egg muffins and oatmeal (flavor of oatmeal TBD once I get back from the grocery store) every morning.

Tonight, I'm eating leftover beef stew I put in the freezer last time I made it

Lunch Saturday: Beef Stew

Dinner Saturday: Pork loin with tomato cucumber salad

Lunch Sunday: Pork loin and tomato cucumber salad

Dinner Sunday: Fried Chicken, broccoli, smashed potatoes

Lunch Monday: Chicken veggies and potatoes

Dinner Monday: Salmon and green beans

Lunch Tuesday: shrimp deviled eggs and fruit salad

Dinner Tuesday: Grilled Chicken with brussel sprouts

Lunch Wednesday: Chicken Salad in Red Pepper

Dinner Wednesday: Sausage, onions and peppers

Lunch Thursday: Sausage onions and peppers

Dinner Thursday: crab stuffed fish

 Things might vary a little depending on whats on sale. (I already think I'm doing pork chops instead of pork loin Saturday.  Chops are on sale!)  Looks like I'm doing a lot of chicken and seafood this week.  The stuffed fish will be a recipe I make up as I go along.  If it's awesome, I'll share it. Lunch is a lot of leftovers.  Its happens!

Red Peppers (my new veggie obsession) are on sale this week at the Safeway.  10 for $10!!! Snacks for the week!

Now, I just have to go to the store.  And the mean temperaure outside is 10 degrees.  Ferenheit.  :::sob:::

a daily post.

So, for lunch, I ate the leftover eggplant dish I made for dinner Tuesday night (it was good, but I have to tweak it before I give the recipe), and it gave me problems.  I ate it for lunch yesterday, and for dinner the night before that, and it didn't cause me any problems.  I really gotta figure this nonsense out.
Dinner tonight was steak and veggies.  I got the steak on sale at Safeway, it was a NY strip for $4.99 a lb. !!  From something I learned on the internet, I put the steak in a 225 degree oven for 20 minutes, then sear it in a flaming hot cast iron for 1.5 minutes each side (I like my steak very very very rare. YMMV).  Only seasoning I used was salt.  Good gravy, that was so good.  for a side,  I cut a carrot on a bias, and steamed them until soft, then added frozen broccoli and cauliflower, then added butter.  My meal was delicious.

Things I'm figuring out.

When I got home from work today, I was HUNGRY.  My planned dinner was salmon and winter mix veggies (broccoli and cauliflower). I brushed the salmon with some italian dressing, and steamed-ish the frozen veggies and added butter.  I was so starving, I just ate the veggies before the salmon was done, standing in the kitchen wolfing them down because SOOO HUNGRY.  Then the large salmon filet was done, and I sat down and at the whole thing.  And immediately felt like shit.
So, one of three things, or maybe a little of all three: either eating too fast is an issue,  salmon is an issue, or eating too much food is an issue.  Because I think all three things happened.  Now, in the past, salmon has caused a tummy rebellion.  In the past, eating too quickly has caused my body to respond by running to the bathroom.  Eating too much always make terrible things happen.
I really should eat smaller meals more often.  I think my body would appreciate that. But my work just doesn't work well with that kind of schedule.  So I do what I can.  And I'm learning that even with 3 meals, smaller portions work so much better for me.  Its just my brain feels hunger, and suddenly, I need a huge portion of food.  That's something I need to work on. And have actively ben working on, actually.  I need to try salmon one more time, and eat a smaller piece, and if it causes me issues again, it's off my list of food.
Unless it's raw.  Raw fish never gives me problems.  Weird.

Stuffed Peppers

Last night, I made stuffed peppers.
Pretty easy to make, and stupidly delicious. I used red bell peppers, because I'm on a red bell pepper kick.  Damn, I love those things.   But you can use whatever color you want.  Mix it up! There are several shades of peppers to use!  go crazy! Also, I used very little cheese, because dairy.  But you can use more (and actually, using a bit more would make it a bit more awesome, as well). And most other stuffed pepper recipes have rice, but as I'm cutting down on grains, I opted to not use rice. This recipe doesn't need it.  Seriously.
This isn't a strictly FODMAP recipe, because there is onion and mushroom (seriously, onion and mushroom are the basis of a vast majority of my meals.  I can't let go of them just yet.)
So, here goes.

Stuffed Peppers 
makes 6 half pepper servings.

3  bell peppers
1.5 lbs ground beef
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 cup dried cherries 
3/4 cup mushroom, chopped
3 TB tomato paste
1.5 cup red wine 
3 Tb cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper 
1/3 cup goat cheese crumbles

Preheat oven to 350.  Cut peppers in half, removng seeds and veins.  set in pan.
saute onions and mushrooms until onion is translucent, then add half cup of the red wine. Cook 3 minutes longer. Add dried cherries, and cook for 2 minutes.  Add ground beef, and season with salt, pepper, and cinnamon. When beef is cooked through, add tomato paste, and rest of red wine.  Once everything is well combined spoon into pepper halves. Top with cheese.  Bake for 25 minutes. 


So good.  
If you try the recipe, let me know!  Also, let me know if the recipe is easy to follow. I need to perfect my recipe writing skills.


 

Reboot

last post was a loooooong time ago.  But I'm feeling inspired to start blogging again.

So, I won't say that I'm doing strict paleo.  At my last check up, I talked to my doctor about the issues I was having with my tummy, and how I suspected IBS.  She agreed that was likely, and suggested the FODMAP diet. The FODMAP diet takes away some of my very favorite foods, like  onions, garlic, mushrooms, avocado, mangos.  Sadness.
But I want to get to the bottom of my IBS issue.  I decided to modify the diet first, and see if I can find what is bothering me. If I find that my favorites also cause me issues, I'll have to delete those from my diet, and I'll be sad.  But first things first.
Dairy, sadly, is a huge issue for me.  I can do a little cheese, and I'm hoping I can do some yogurt, but everything else is a huge no no.  No ice cream, no milk,  no sour cream.
Raw greens seem to be a big problem for me, too.  No raw spinach, no raw broccoli, no raw cauliflower..but cooked, and in small amounts, I seem to be okay. It's a process.
Wheat may be an issue, so I'm deleting it. from my diet for a few months to see how I feel. For now, I'm not taking out all grains, but I am cutting them significantly.
Pretty much everything else will be on an experimental basis.  If I find an ingredient is troublesome, I'll delete it, and add and subtract until such time as I have a diet of foods that won't hurt me.
Also, I'm interested in eating nourishing food instead of just filling foods.  We'll see how this goes.

First off, I made a week worth of breakfast!
a small vat of cinnamon apple peanut butter oatmeal
and
sausage veggie and egg muffins.

I won't give you the recipe for the oatmeal yet, because I'm not enamored with it.  I'll try again next week with some tweaks, and if it pleases me, I'll post the recipe.

But the muffins!  Oh yes, the muffins.

Note, for the sausage, you can use ground sausage, or you can use cut up link sausage.  I planned on using ground, but Safeway had some gluten free organic blah blah link sausage that had a coupon for free eggs.  I'm a sucker for free stuff I need anyway.
So here goes:

SAUSAGE, VEGGIE AND EGG MUFFINS
Recipe for 1 dozen muffins

  7 eggs, beaten, salt and peppered to taste
  5 cooked breakfast sausage, sliced (or abt. 1 cup cooked ground sausage)
  1/2 onion, chopped
  1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
  6 mushrooms, sliced
  1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed and dried
  1/3 cup goat cheese crumble (more if you want, and okay with cheese. Or different cheese.      Whatevs.  I won't judge)

Preheat oven to 325. Grease the muffin tins (or put in muffin papers if you're so inclined) put equal amounts of everything but the eggs into the muffin cups.  Pour egg over ingredients, filling to about 2/3 full (remember, eggs grow when they bake).  Bake about 30 minutes, or until there is no more liquidy egg (this is where making sure the  spinach  is dried off first is important. And why I don't recommend fresh spinach.).
I single wrap them, and set them in the fridge.  I eat one with the oatmeal in the morning, and share with my roommate, because I'm super nice. I reheat in the microwave for 20 seconds, and let it set for a minute.

Let me know what you think!  I'll be posting more recipes as I go along.  Including the delicious stuffed pepper I made last night.



 Oh, and if you want more info on the FODMAP diet, here's a link.
https://stanfordhealthcare.org/content/dam/SHC/for-patients-component/programs-services/clinical-nutrition-services/docs/pdf-lowfodmapdiet.pdf