Menu for the week

Our menu for the upcoming week:

• Salisbury Steak
• Dad's pork chops
• Zesty cilantro lime roasted chicken
• Czech meatballs
• Coconut chicken curry soup
• Sausage and miscellaneous vegetables

All recipes contingent on my level of laziness, and what ingredients are on sale/ridiculous this week.

--Erin

Freezer stew

I've been trying to clean out our freezer, and I had about a pound of beef chuck roast and a pound of boneless lamb leg.  Not enough to do anything with on their own, but they made a really good stew together!

Ingredients:

• 1 lb beef chuck roast, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 lb leg of lamb, cut into 1 inch cubes
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 parsnip, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• 5-6 large white mushrooms, chopped
• 1 large onion, chopped
• Spices: dried basil, thyme, oregano; black pepper; seasoned salt
• 6 giant cloves of garlic, crushed in my garlic press
• 2-3 cups of chicken broth

I threw all this in the crockpot this morning and let it cook on low for 7 hours.  It came out really flavorful, the meat was perfectly tender and not dry at all!  Usually, I find my miscellaneous stews to be rather bland and uninspired with a taste that doesn't make me want to eat the leftovers, but this one was really good!  I think the secret ingredient was the Borsari seasoned salt.  We picked it up at Whole Foods a few weeks ago and so far it's made everything we've put it on amazing.

Ground Beef Curry

This recipe is a conglomerate of several online recipes, and one recipe from The Paleo Solution. It's a very easy meal, and always better than I remember.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs ground beef (any ground meat will work here; we've used venison, pork, bison)
• 1/2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 c curry powder
• spinach (a lot; we chop ours up pretty small because we're still wusses when it comes to veggies)
• 1 can coconut milk
• 4 cloves garlic

Directions
In a skillet, saute minced garlic in olive oil. Brown the ground meat. We usually drain the meat before continuing. Mix in the curry powder. Add the coconut milk and spinach at the same time. Mix well and let it simmer for a few minutes.

This is enough for both of us for dinner and lunch the following day.

Last Week's Menu, New Blogger

Hi all! Erin has invited me to join her family with blogging our weekly menu. Jon and I just started the Whole-30 challenge on Monday, so these first few weeks may be fairly restricted. The previous week included the following recipes:

• Burgers & asparagus
  
• Thai Almond Pork
• Balsamic Pork Chops
• Ground Beef Curry
• Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup

Burgers are basic for us, grass-fed beef seasoned with garlic salt and black pepper. I'll post a few recipes we use for condiments later.

The thai almond pork was okay, but I don't know if we'll do it again. It just wasn't quite as appetizing the second day, and we depend on leftovers for lunch.

The balsamic pork chops were excellent, and may become a gym night staple meal for us. We made the mistake of using a bit of lard in the skillet for the first batch of pork chops, so they didn't end up glazing very well. The second batch glazed very well, since there was balsamic vinegar in the skillet during the entire searing process. After the second batch was finished, we added spinach to the skillet and lightly wilted it in the remaining balsamic vinegar.

The ground beef curry is one of our current gym night staples. It's quick, easy, and the biggest obstacle on gym nights is trying to pick up our heavy cast-iron skillet.

Since I got my wisdom teeth out Friday, I've been living off the sweet potato & sausage soup. Jon's not a big fan, but I've really enjoyed it, and I've only been able to eat it cold so far. As far as the recipe goes, we also doubled the sausage, and added some ground beef to make sure I got enough protein this weekend. Jon forgot the curry powder, but it still had a good flavor. It's also possible that I favor it because it has a similar consistency to hash, which I miss dearly.

Menu for the week

Here's next week's menu!

• Sun-dried tomato chicken bake
• Barcelona Burger
• Nice and Spicy Pot Roast
• Stuffed Squash
• Smoked paprika chicken thighs
• Beef and lamb stew (which I will make up as I go along...)
• and corned beef with cabbage!

Slow-roasted pork shoulder

Yesterday's all-day cooking adventure was the slow roasted pork shoulder, with a deboned and trussed 8+ lb pork shoulder!  I followed the recipe fairly faithfully, with the exception of slightly reducing the amount of fennel since I'm not a huge fan. (More fennel was requested for the next iteration, however.)  In my oven it took almost exactly 8 hours to get to an internal temperature of 195 degrees, the temperature for pull-apart pork according to the internet.  I think next time I might take it up to 200 or so--parts of it were meltingly tender and shreddable, while a few other areas were a little more solid.  The fat of course was delicious, melting into the meat and making it moist and very flavorful!  There wasn't much orange or onion flavor, however, unless you were eating a piece that had sat on top of the fruit during the cooking.  I didn't mind much, but maybe next time I'll experiment with getting a little more in there?

Leftovers--of which there were many--were delicious for lunch today.

Sweet Potato and Sausage Soup

I made this on Sunday, it was very easy and tastes delicious!

• 1 3/4 lbs sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1/2 lb of your favorite spicy pork sausage, casing removed
• 2 large carrots, roughly chopped
• 2 celery stalks, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 tsp curry powder;
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 7 cups chicken stock
• Coconut oil
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

I doubled the sausage, because I had a whole pound that needed to be used up. It all gets dumped into the blender anyway, and in the end I couldn't really taste the sausage at all, so it must not have been too much!

1. Heat a large skillet over a medium-high heat with some cooking fat.
2. Add the sweet potatoes, sausage meat, carrots, celery, garlic, onions and curry powder. Combine well.
3. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 8 minutes, until the carrots and sweet potatoes are slightly soft.
4. While the vegetables are cooking, pour the chicken stock in a pot and bring to a boil.
5. Add the cooked vegetables to the hot stock, bring back to a simmer and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the sweet potato cubes are cooked through.
6. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, pour everything in a blender or food processor and process until smooth.

The curry flavor was a lot stronger than I expected, especially since I doubled the sausage and also added a little more sweet potato, I would cut down the curry if you're making it for someone who doesn't like that flavor!

Short rib ragu

I made the short rib ragu yesterday while puttering around the house, and wow.  It came out delicious!  The meat is incredibly meltingly tender, and the sauce is thick and fatty without feeling greasy or heavy.

I made a few modifications out of necessity: my grocery store didn't have porcini mushrooms this time, so I substituted 0.75 oz of assorted dried mushrooms.  I also didn't have Worcestershire sauce, so I added a dash of tamari soy sauce and probably about a teaspoon of anchovy paste.  And I skipped the gremolata (out of laziness).

For the meat, I used about 5.5 lbs of bone-in short ribs.  I would have liked to put in more to increase the final amount of meat, but that's all that would fit in my pot!  Lacking an immersion blender I pureed the sauce in my food processor in two batches.  Finally, I ended up simmering it very gently for about 2 more hours to reduce it, in large part because that's just how long it was until we ate it.

The final product doesn't look like the picture of the recipe; mine is much more like a thick stew.  I can imagine it would be delicious served over some sort of floppy pasta (like bowties) so I'm trying to figure out a good paleo substitution.  Maybe thin blanched zucchini slices next time?  It's delicious in a bowl by itself though so I'm not thinking too hard about it!

menu for the week

I'm going to try hard to be better about posting on here!  Here's my tentative menu for next week...I'll try to write up anything that comes out particularly good.

• Spicy Beef and Vegetable Soup
• Island Stuffed Chicken
• Ropa Vieja
• Chicken Sweet Potato Curry
• Slow Roasted Pork Shoulder
• Short Rib Ragu