Mmmm… Salmon. Yesterday I previewed a lemon sage salmon and it. was. so. good!
I’ve been trying to simplify our menu-planning efforts by making meals that are repeatable, if not predictable. For example, fish once/week, vegetarian meal, something with beef, something with chicken, something with pork. That gets us through the work week, and then the weekends are usually scavenging whatever is left.
Monday I made unstuffed peppers and that recipe was *really* good. I could’ve skipped the cheese, but why would I? It also came together really easily.. ground beef, bell peppers, seasonings, (cook), pasta sauce, beef stock, pasta, (cook), cheese, stir, serve.
Here’s the recipe, if you can call it that…The salmon was moist and delicious when we had it for dinner last night. I bought a 1.5lb fillet from our local grocer and sliced up 4 portions at home. From there, I drizzled it with olive oil, seasoned with lemon peel, sage, salt, and pepper. Bake at 375 F for 20ish minutes, squeeze fresh lemon over top and serve.
We had ours with frozen veggies and a slice of buttered bread. It might as well be dessert because the Peppridge Farm Whole Grain Oatmeal Bread was delicious. I could probably eat an entire loaf if I weren’t disciplined enough.
The cool thing about this fish (and something I didn’t appreciate until today) is that it actually reheated pretty well. I squeezed fresh lemon on top then zapped it in the microwave for 45 seconds. It didn’t get dried out at all and I actually enjoyed having left overs at work today. Do you like fish? What’s your favorite cut and method of preparation?
Originally, this was going to be a recipe from Practical Paleo, but then I realized that I was missing some very key ingredients like tahini and coconut, and I had an extra ingredient: pecans.
I used that recipe as the inspiration for this one and it was lovely.
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla
Cinnamon to taste
1/4 cup pecans, pulverized
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup raisins
Honey to taste
Are you ready for the hard part? Put it all in a pot, mix it up, then heat to your desired temperature. Easy as that!
Here, I garnished it with a whole pecan, a cluster of raisins, and a swirl of honey.
While I’m staying home with BabyGirl, there is a lot of opportunity to watch daytime television. There’s an unbelievable amount of talk shows on that follow a similar format. The Talk, The View, The Chew, The Real…
My in-laws are in town for Easter. They drive all the way down from Winnipeg, and I like to think it’s just for my pumpkin pancakes.
I’m allowing myself to call them “mine” because I make a couple tweaks to the original recipe. It’s actually a recipe from Diane Sanfilippo, from the book entitled Practical Paleo.
Since everyone was still sleeping, I had the entire first floor to myself. Step one: turn on some tunes.
Now that you’re bopping around to some good tunes, you should realize that you’re starving. Eat a can of pears while getting your ingredients together!
As you’re getting your ingredients together, question the freshness of your eggs since you can’t remember when you bought them. The Float Test works really well! If you’re questioning your eggs, give it a try.
Ruh roh… One of them is bad. Two are alright, and one is fresh. Toss the baddie and swap in another fresh egg!
All set? You should have 4 eggs, 1/2 cup pumpkin puree, 2* TBLS vanilla extract, 2 TBLS maple syrup, 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp baking soda, and 2 TBLS coconut floor*.
*quantities or ingredients vary from original recipe.
All set?? K, let’s mix the wet ingredients first.
Whip that up–I use an electric beater, but a whisk would work too. Next, get together the dry ingredients. Make sure to get your cook book all messy… This is required. 😛
K, mix the dry ingredients together so that we can sift them into the wet ingredients next.
Mix these together, then set it aside for a moment. Now is going to be a great time to clean up your dishes and get the skillet or griddle pre-heated.
That’s one of the things that I learned from my grandma. If you clean as you go, the end clean up won’t be so bad.
Now, if you’re using a nonstick skillet, you shouldn’t need the coconut oil that’s called for in the original recipe. I normally prefer to leave it out, but I used a little this time just to stick a little closer to the original recipe.
These cook up a little differently than normal pancakes. Depending on how hot your griddle is, these might cook up in a couple minutes, but it could take longer. Our griddle is starting to lose heat in some areas, so I had a couple false starts. You can watch for the bubbles to burst, but it could be a little while before you see that.
Flip! These are a bit wet, even with the added coconut flour, so I like to press them after they’re flipped to get them to cook through. I also flip them again to make sure both sides of the batter that ooozes out (yummy!) is cooked.
Slice up some fruit to have with your meal, and you’re all set. These pancakes are so flavorful that you won’t need butter or syrup to go with them. By all means, feel free to dress them up!
The way I see it, if Mother Nature can see fit to drop a bunch of snow on our heads, wreck the Monday commute, and interfere with what was becoming a very nice spring… Then I can make tacos on a Monday morning.
We had a great weekend as we started to choose baby gear and consider lifestyle options:
– Yes, we should have a pro redo the newel post.
– No we don’t need a pro to install the banister.
– Yes we should get the structural issues in the basement repaired.
– No we shouldn’t take out a new loan to pay for the repairs.
– Yes, technically the car seat fits in the Audi, but no, it’s not practical to keep the car.
I swear we need a weekend to recover from our weekend.
The next best thing I could do was to inject a little flavor into our Monday. I browned ground beef, sauteed some yellow onion, added some orange peppers for color, seasoned with the home made taco seasoning blend (courtesy of Practical Paleo). I served it all up on soft tortillas, topped with fresh avocado and salsa.
I guess if I have to say one good thing about the snow, it’s that it makes great filtered lighting for taking pictures of food with my phone 😉
Is it just me, or is WordPress being weird? I usually include photos in my posts and this one *STARTED* fine, but then I went back to edit the draft of this post and the photo exploded. The preview looks fine, but, I dunno…I’m typing right now and all I can see is the orange and it’s super zoomed in and… let’s just say it doesn’t look like an orange at the moment @_@;
Ahem.
I’ve been away a lot lately because, well, life happens–I needed to be there for family and so I was. This involved going back to Canada for a funeral service just a week and a half after we had come home from Canada, but it was well worth the journey, just to gain some closure, healing, and time with family.
I’m at a point, where I want to get back to what I originally intended with this blog–cooking, working out, getting healthy.
Today, I’m spring cleaning around the apartment and I’ll be cooking up a few things for this week’s dinners. I’ve got my grocery list planned out and the meal plans, too. Now it’s just a matter of executing on the plan:
Wednesday: Wild Rice Soup – made from a mix, I’ll be adding fresh mushrooms and serving with a salad and a crusty bread.
Thursday: Spaghetti – nothing fancy, just browned beef, pasta, and sauce
Friday: Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup
Saturday: Skillet Gnocchi w/ Chard and White Beans – we’ve tried this one before, and it was terrible. Mostly, Jeff says, because “melted spatula” wasn’t supposed to be part of the recipe.
A lot of why I haven’t been posting here is because there hasn’t been much fitness to speak of. On June 26th, 2012, I finally sought medical advice for my back. Here on July 9, 2013, I’m still in pain daily.
Originally, we thought it was a Rhomboid Strain and my Primary Care Physician referred me to a physical therapist. The physical therapist determined that it was not, in fact, a rhomboid strain, but to do with the alignment of my hips. I followed the physical therapy for a couple of months, and my hips didn’t click anymore, but my back still hurt. I sought another option.
When I went to the Chiropractor, we found a series of issues with my back that are actually there–the alignment was off, there’s the start of arthritis due to the misalignment, etc. We’ve been working hard since January to bring everything in line and I really
Dr. Pennebaker, doing an adjustment with the Gonstead Method [click to learn more]believe it’s helping. My back still hurts every morning, though. We were getting a lot better, making a lot of good progress, and then we experienced a really bad setback.
When Jeff and I got back from the Canadian reception, I had a few really rough mornings. I thought it was just because the bed wasn’t supportive enough, or maybe the long ride in the car… But no, this felt like I was being squeezed–like my ribs were being pushed out of place. It hurt to breathe, hurt to move, hurt to laugh–should I care to, hurt to yawn, hurt to sneeze, cough, or hiccup. When I talked to my dad about it, he said “Oh, that’s just a pulled muscle–you’ll feel better in about a week.”
It’s been over a week and I’m still waking up in pain. My Chiropractor gave me a sort of “ah-ha” moment when he observed that it was swelling and inflammation causing the pain. The word “inflammation,” hung in my head repeating itself like a fading memory. Until all of a sudden, the light at the end of a tunnel turned out to be a train. What if my DIET is causing me all of this stress and drama with my back!?
It makes sense! I eat a Western diet high in processed carbs and lots of sugars. Last Friday, by happenstance, I didn’t eat much in the way of sugar or refined carbs. On Saturday, as if by a miracle, I had no back pain. Yesterday, I had cereal for dinner, chex mix for a snack, a wrap for lunch, and a breakfast sandwich for breakfast. My back is killing me today.
So now, the problem that I’m faced with is “how do I convert my eating habits to the anti-inflammatory diet?”
I don’t know 😦
The sites I’ve looked at say
Foods to Steer Clear of—Here’s what you’ll want to wean yourself off of in order to reduce the inflammation in your body: wheat, dairy, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, sugar, citrus fruits (except for lemons and limes), pork, commercial non-organic eggs, shellfish, peanuts and peanut butter, coffee, alcohol, juice, caffeinated teas, soda, anything containing hydrogenated oils, processed foods, and fried foods. – http://primaldocs.com/opinion/how-to-transition-to-an-anti-inflammatory-diet/
I keep seeing conflicting information, though. One site says pineapple is to be avoided as it’s a tropical fruit. Another says pineapple will decrease inflammation. One says nightshades and tomatoes are bad. Another doesn’t mention them at all.
I’m so terribly lost. I’ve cast out the line to the Weight Loss Warriors to ask if they have any experience with this sort of conversion. I read that high quality yogurts and cheeses can be eaten in moderation, so maybe I can use that to my advantage when subbing foods?
Here’s our dinner menu for the week… If anyone has any ideas on how to convert it to an anti-inflammation version, I’d appreciate the help:
So, things have been absolutely crazy lately. So, crazy, in fact, that I somehow managed to forget to eat my bananas =P Haha! Usually I just make smoothies or banana bread when the naners get over-ripe, but as fate would have it, my buddy Christy posted about this super easy way to use over-ripe bananas:
We’ve also been kind of stressed out with wedding planning lately (76 days to go), especially now that we know what we need to have as far as finances are concerned. Our solution is just to add Amaretto to everything, haha! I did end up making banana bread this weekend and I spiked it with amaretto… we’ve been putting amaretto in pancakes and coffee lately so I figured we could put it into banana bread, too. We usually put vanilla into our banana bread, with some apple pie spice, so I figured amaretto would be pretty delicious in it, too. It was. Nom.
So, WW is super diligent about watching out for copyright infringement, so I can’t post the whole recipe or directions here, but in the book I bought there’s a recipe for Grilled Fish with Mango Salsa. There are 6 ingredients and the prep time is probably around 15-20 minutes. I wasn’t in the mood to de-vein jalapeños or deal with slimy mangoes (especially in winter?) so I cheated a little bit. Here’s the condensed version of WW Grilled Fish with Mango Salsa:
Ingredients:
1- bowl of fruit salsa from your local deli
2- fillets of cod (skin removed)
little bit of lemon juice, plus salt and pepper to taste.
Directions:
Unwrap fish from the paper it comes in, place in a skillet over medium heat. Drizzle with a little bit of lemon, salt, and pepper. Depending on the thickness of your fillet, it’ll be ready to flip around 3-5 minutes. Apply the same techniques to this side – lemon, salt, pepper as desired. This will be done in about 3-5 minutes as well. The fish will be done when it can be flaked with a fork and is no longer translucent. Don’t over-cook the fish or it’ll get rubbery.
Top with spoonfuls of the prepared salsa and enjoy 🙂
A lot of why I haven’t been posting here is because there hasn’t been much fitness to speak of. On June 26th, 2012, I finally sought medical advice for my back. Here on July 9, 2013, I’m still in pain daily.
MegsFitness 