Mushroom & goat cheese tart

Mushroom & goat cheese tart
Originally uploaded by thatgirljj

We gave up on going out to dinner for Valentine's Day years ago. It's really the worst night for eating out... rivaled only by trying to find a table for brunch on Mother's Day. Not only are all the tables booked, but the wait staff and kitchen staff would really rather be spending the evening with their loved ones. And now that we have a 3 year old, we'd have to find a sitter on top of all that? Forget it. I'd much rather fix a fancy dinner at home.

Anyway, who said you have to go for chocolates and fancy desserts to be romantic? Our menu this year is going to include cedar planked wild salmon, artichokes with homemade mayo, and this amazing mushroom & goat cheese tart. I did a trial run tonight, and my husband was raving about how amazing it was.

(My son on the other hand, was super excited about having "pie for dinner", then when it appeared on his plate, he refused to eat it and instead ate his weight in roasted cauliflower. Kids are weird. )

Mushroom & goat cheese tart

Crust:
1/2 cup blanched hazelnuts
1 cup almond meal
1/4 tsp ground sage
1/4-1/2 tsp table salt
2 tablespoons melted ghee
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon water

In a food processor, fitted with the S blade, process the hazelnuts until they are finely ground. Add the almond meal, sage and salt, pulse to combine. Mix the ghee, olive oil and water in a small bowl, turn the food processor on, and pour into the dry ingredients. Run until it is well mixed (should be no more than 30 seconds). Press the crust into a tart or quiche pan, thinning it out in the middle and pressing it gently up a the edges of the pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 18-20 minutes. Let cool.

Filling:
8oz crimini or oyster mushrooms
1 small leek
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 eggs
1oz soft goat cheese

Preheat oven to 350.
Split and rinse the leek, then thinly slice the white portion crossways. Thinly slice the mushrooms. Saute the mushrooms in the olive oil; when they soften, add the leeks and saute a little longer until the leeks and mushrooms start to brown. Take the leeks and mushrooms and spread them evenly across the crust. Blend the eggs and cheese together with an immersion blender or mixer. Pour eggs over the vegetables. Bake for 20 minutes. Serve.

Sodium: 1/4 of the tart has 230mg sodium, when made with the smaller amount of salt in the crust.

What I learned on the Whole30

My Whole30 results in a nutshell are that I lost 7 pounds with no real cravings or struggle. Which is revolutionary for me because since I was 11, losing weight has almost always been a struggle. I've been on the chunky side since I was 10 or so... just always a little overweight, only once or twice crossing over into the realm of "obese", but I've had a hard time getting down into the "normal" weight for my height. And believe me when I say I've tried everything. In high school I started running and capped my daily calories at 900, I lost some weight for a few months, but put it all right back as soon as I hit the college cafeteria (even though I was doing plenty of trail running in the gorgeous mountains of New Mexico). And since college I've run through everything. Weight Watchers. Low fat vegan. The Zone. Atkins. Body for Life. SlimFast. Stupid "fat burner" pills that just made me hungry. They had varying levels of success (and when I lose weight I can often keep it off, barring pregnancy or major injury), but one thing they all had in common were that they all took a lot of mental struggle and cravings.

The other thing they had in common? Diet coke. Splenda. Nutrasweet. Diet red bull. More diet coke. You get the picture here?

And that was my #1 biggest change with the Whole30, I gave up all sweeteners (real and artificial) for a month. Wow. That's big. I'd been drinking diet soda since I was 14! Now the coffee thing I had worked out, I'd switched to drinking black about a year ago and never looked back. But the diet soda thing was a big change. Even when I was pregnant with my son I still had splenda in my decaf coffee and the occasional diet coke. Now for the first time in 24 years, I went a full 30 days with no artificial sweetener in ANYTHING.

And what did I find? My cravings for junk food, sweet food, breads, pastries and fried food DISAPPEARED. A co-worker would pass my desk with a box of doughnuts and I would think to myself "that looks good, but I'll pass." That wasn't just what I said out loud, that was what I said in my head, to myself. Instead of struggling and debating and passing on the doughnuts in front of her, but then grabbing two out of the break room an hour later (OK, let's be honest, 10 minutes later). All the mental gymnastics just disappeared. I did have a little bit of wrestling with myself over wanting a diet coke. But that was fairly easy to resist, since I wasn't spending all my mental energy wrestling with myself over other stuff.

The most surprising thing? I did not expect this AT ALL! I expected to have a month of arguing with myself over what not to eat. Because that has been my experience for most of my life. No more. I had always glossed over arguments against diet soda thinking to myself "it's just flavored water... what can it harm?" I had no idea that it was completely messing up my relationship with real honest food.

Bacon Nut-o-la

Bacon Nut-o-la
Originally uploaded by thatgirljj

Sometimes I get inspired to be very, very naughty in the kitchen. Today was one of those days, I was randomly pondering what I could do with some leftover dried coconut, and then it occurred to me, granola... well, not grain-ola per se, but maybe a nut-o-la. And then that little devil on my shoulder whispered "bacon"... Bacon? Yes bacon!

Bacon Nut-o-la

5 slices natural, nitrate free bacon
1/3 cup unsweetened dried coconut flakes
1/2 cup sliced almonds (the kind that look like thin flakes)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon reserved bacon fat
Dash of ground cardamom (optional)

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

In a large pan, cook your bacon slowly over low heat, you want to render out a lot of the fat and pour it out a couple times while cooking, so that the bacon gets nice and crispy. When it's crisp, take the bacon out and drain on paper towels, then chop coarsely with a knife. Mix the bacon crumbles, coconut and almonds together in a small mixing bowl. Separately, mix the vanilla, maple syrup, reserved bacon fat and cardamom. Pour over the bacon/nut mixture and toss to distribute evenly. Spread the nut-o-la out evenly on a cookie sheet lined with baking parchment. Bake for 15 minutes, stir it a bit, and continue to bake checking every 5 minutes until the mixture is lightly browned. Watch it carefully for burning. Remove from oven and allow to cool, then break up (it should crumble easily). Store in the refrigerator.

The sodium content of this seems like it would be stupid high. But you're not going to eat much of it, I'm showing just about a tablespoon over yogurt in the picture. Using low sodium bacon (70mg per slice) I'm guessing it's about 50mg per tablespoon.

Out with a whimper

Well, sort of. I ended on a rough note. Let me backtrack to Saturday night... a friend had a big blow-out birthday dinner. I went! I got dressed up fancy(ish)! I drank tea instead of cocktails! I interrogated the waitress and decided on scallops over a lobster & mushroom hash (hold the sauce and hold the potatoes on the hash). It was fabulous. Except that Monday morning I woke up at 4am with an obvious case of food poisoning. I'm pretty sure it was the damn scallops because my husband had the same entree and also had some tummy problems, AND I've had this happen with undercooked scallops before. Damnit! Scallops are so yummy, but I think I'm going to need to pass on them in the future.

Anyway, yesterday morning, I called in sick from work and spent most of the morning in the bathroom. I ate a banana and had some applesauce, but by noon I was really feeling rough. I was feeling shaky and having heart palpitations, and I just wanted to eat something starchy. I couldn't stand the idea of eating any protein and fruit was just making me more shaky. So I cooked up a little bit of tapioca and had it with some coconut milk (no sweeteners). I wasn't going to spend 12 more hours suffering just so say that I was totally 100% clean for 30 days instead of 29.5. Especially since about an hour after I ate the tapioca the shakes and palpitations were gone and I actually felt like eating a little chicken. I've been steadily feeling better ever since.

I'm going to call it as completed though. I lost 7 pounds without any real difficulty and no serious cravings for anything except diet coke. That continues to be the most amazing thing to me, that there are just no internal struggles if I eat this way. I'm going to make a big long post about just that issue... but really given my history with food this is just a revelation!!! I've felt strong and healthy the whole time, no trouble recovering from workouts or keeping up with an unexpectedly stressful month at my job. I hate to say this... but it was pretty easy. Way, way easier than I had thought.

So what now? Well, I want to try dairy products, but I'm going to hold off on them until at least next weekend. Right now I want to let my GI tract heal before I go eating anything different. I need to be able to tell if any symptoms are due to cheese or just residual suffering from the damn scallops.

Poblano breakfast hash

Poblano breakfast hash
Originally uploaded by thatgirljj

I've been doing a few variations on the same theme for breakfast these days. It's a ground beef & cabbage based breakfast hash, that's super easy to partially cook ahead and then throw it together in the morning. This particular flavor combo, with the poblanos & cumin is pretty yummy... but the basic model can be adapted ad infinitum.

Meat mix

1 onion
2 poblano chiles
1 pound grassfed ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/8-1/4 teaspoon salt (lower amount if you're sodium sensitive)

Thinly slice the onion and the poblanos. Using a large saucepan, saute the onion in the olive oil until it starts to soften, then add the poblanos and continue to cook until they soften as well. Add the ground beef (break it up into smaller chunks before adding it to the pan), sprinkle the spices over the top, and cook it all together until the beef is cooked through. Store in the fridge.

Breakfast hash

3-4oz of pre-shredded cabbage (yes, the kind in the bag, I use about 1/3 of a 12oz bag, or 2-3 handfulls)
Olive oil
1/4 recipe of the meat mix above
1/4 sliced avocado

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, add enough olive oil to swirl over the bottom of the pan. Throw in the cabbage and saute until the cabbage starts to brown. Add the meat mix to the pan, and continue to saute until it's thoroughly heated and the cabbage is well browned. Serve with thinly sliced avocado over the top.

Obviously, you can change the flavor of the meat mix considerably according to your tastes... I'm a huge fan of southwestern food, so this is a nice combo for me. If you're not sodium sensitive it would work really well with some bulk sausage and mushrooms (yum). Or you could use a thai curry paste and go the southeast asian route. Endless possibilities. But the best part is that it assembles lickety split in the morning and you have a nice filling breakfast with almost no work.

Sodium: 1/4 of the meat mix with 4oz cabbage will run about 175mg of sodium when made with the smaller amount of salt

Day 28 and Day 31

Today is day 28 of my Whole30 and I've been doing a little bit of thinking about what I'm going to do day 31. Ohmigod you guys... I'm busting out here... with dinner I'm going to have my favorite low sodium spaghetti sauce* that has a wee tiny bit of added sugar!!! And I'm going to have it over baked eggplant with a nice Shelton's italian sausage on top.

So basically, the only thing that's changing right away is that there are a few natural convenience foods with a bit of added sugar that are going back in my diet. Pasta sauce, a little bacon... ummm... OK, so those two things are pretty much it. But man, on a busy weekday night (and Tuesday I'm seeing the eye doctor after work) it sure is convenient to pop open a jar of sauce rather than simmering a sauce from scratch, even if it means a wee bit of sugar.

And planning for this transition back to everyday eating is why I really liked having gone to hear Dallas & Melissa speak. They're big on context. Considering your food choices in light of your whole life. Are you insulin sensitive or not? How active are you? If you're active, how well are you recovering? What foods may have caused problems during the Whole30? What is your sleep & stress situation like? The Whole30 gives you an opportunity to see how food choices are affecting all those things.

If I step back and look at my life, here's what I see. I'm insulin sensitive and our whole family is active, so a few grams of sugar in otherwise good clean foods probably isn't going to be that bad. The artificial sweeteners on the other hand? Those have been messing me up badly, they're gone for good now, I'm not going back. I'm probably going to test out dairy and white potatoes carefully and see how I react. Duck eggs will come back, but only as a binder or occasional homemade mayo; chicken eggs are out, I'm just not going to play around with known intollerances anymore. Red wine, cider and beans will go back to being occasional party food.

Grains are another story. I don't think I'm even going to test out how I'm reacting to grains for several more months, or until I'm at the weight I want to be at for optimal performance. They just don't seem super necessary to eat, I'm fine without them. I don't even have really strong cravings for them. If I can get starches from sweet potatoes, root veggies and possibly white potatoes, then there's really no reason to add them back. On the culinary side, I've found plenty of veggies that can suck up yummy sauces... eggplant with Italian food, roasted cauliflower with Indian, extra cabbage in Thai curries. I may go back to sometimes having grains as special occasion foods (sushi!), but I'm not even going to try that out for some time. The same thing with eliminating seed oils, I don't have any good reason to make any changes there, so I'm just going to continue on the same path.

* Note on the Enrico's sauce: The jars I get locally has a slightly different ingredient list than healthyheartmarket.com, mine does have some sugar, but then has less overall sugars/carbs in a 1/2 cup serving. I don't know if they need to update their info, or I have a slightly different product (Enrico's has a few no salt added options).

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

People, I have found nirvana! Breakfast nirvana at least. I stopped by our local indie health food store today and they'd rearranged their freezer section. So I had a peek and right there they had some new frozen products from Sheltons a local company known for good quality (though not pastured) poultry. Without much hope, I turned picked up the turkey breakfast sausage and read the stats... HOLY COW 170mg of sodium??? And no sugars, fillers or other junk in the ingredients? This is too good to be true... normal sausages run 300-350 for a single sausage patty and often have added sugars on top of it. But nope, this is the good stuff, turkey, turkey fat, water, sea salt & spices.

You see, once you start looking around at anything that's processed in any way, you're going to find salt & sugar. Usually together. Some smaller companies are catching on, they realize that people want processed foods with less junk in them. But invariably if they take out the sugar they add in more salt. Or if they take out some of the salt, they add sugar that never needed to be there in the first place. It's like they feel compelled to "amp up" the food for fear no one will eat it unless it fits with hyperprocessed tastes. When in reality, I think there is a genuine demand for honest food. Not oversweet, not oversalted, just plain honest food.

Anyway, cheers to Shelton's... they get it.

And now I have another breakfast option! :-)