My Shopping Guide

When I read all the blog posts where people tout their primal or paleo prowess and give advice for what to eat/not eat and how to plan and having things on hand to munch on, I get sort of miffed.  I mean, that's all good and well, but if I'm trying to walk the straight-and-narrow, I need tools, not regurgitated information.  I know to stick to the perimeter of the store and that Cheetos are not primal, but I want something more... some direction... some real guidelines... to help ensure that I stay on the primal course. 

I need something that makes shopping and planning easier for me.  Well, necessity is the mother of invention, so I made my own.  You can access it from the link below or on the "Shopping Guide" tab at the top of the site.  If anyone besides me ever reads my blog, hopefully it will be of help to someone else.  :) 

Part of my inspiration came from a post on one of my favorite blogs - The Clothes Make the Girl.  Breaking the produce down into colors helps to remind me to use a variety of items and reminds me that there is a large variety of produce from which to choose.  Rating the produce based on its carb density helps me to see if I'm buying a lot of high-carb fruits and vegetables - which could lead back to the old road - and means I need to re-evaluate what I'm eating. 

I'm incorporating menu planning in my 2011 Primal adventure, so I've included a section on my shopping list for my weekly menu.  It  provides focus when I'm in the grocery store.  

So, here it is:  Primal Confessions' Primal Shopping List.  Hope it's of use.

Taking Stock and Stocking Up

Today's Day 1 of my commitment to being more primal and my commitment to a better me.  I've been on vacation since December 17th and, since I knew I'd be doing this, I've been trying to eat things I already had in the house so I didn't have to throw it away.  (Yeah, I know I could take stuff to some local food bank, but most of it was "loose" stuff... flour, sugar, pasta etc in my canisters, that they just won't accept and I was trying to spend as little additional money as possible on food while I was off.)  

Before I went to the store, I had to take stock, do some serious planning, and make a list (I like lists - they make me feel  like I've got a plan of attack!).  Going on the principle that when you've got good stuff at home, you don't go out looking for it somewhere else, I planned my menu for the week and used my shopping list to lay out the things I'll need for the week.  Then, I hit the street with my plan in mind and my list in hand. 

Now, some women like to shop for knick-knacks and do-dads and some like to shop for clothes and shoes and some like to shop for men and diamonds, but me, I like to shop for food (and school supplies, which is probably something I inherited from my mother).  I don't like to meander around the grocery store - and when I get stuck behind people who are meanderers, I get a little bit of grocery store road rage (Get your cart out of the way before I have to hit it with my cart!) - but I like to be surrounded by all the options and colorful possibilities that are there in the grocery store.  It's a little sick, I know. 

Now that my fridge and freezer are brimming with healthy primal foods, I feel like I'm off to a rip-roaring start to the new year and the new me.  Here are the before and after pics of my fridge - quite a difference, huh. 

In addition to taking stock of the food situation, I had to take stock of my body.  You've got to know where you started to know how far you've come.  Obviously, there are some things that can't be defined with my tape measure, like my energy level and self-loathing, but the inches lost will provide motivation in the future on those days when the energy and spirit are lacking. 

Ugh, it wasn't pretty and it certainly didn't make me happy, but I just view it as a starting point... it is what it is and whining about it won't gain me anything.  I've listed the stats on my Progress page so I can trend the measurements.  I also took a couple of 'before' pictures of myself so I can see where the changes occur - maybe give me a little objectivity when it's needed in the future.  It'll definitely be interesting to track and review if I'm able to stick with this for a while.   

So Long 2010...

It's New Years Eve and today's the day when people all over the world post about the past year and what they're looking forward to in the coming year... and why should I be any different?   

Looking back, it was, like all the years before, a year of good intentions and poor follow-through.  It was a year of getting on and falling off the primal horse... not much more I can say about that.  I've always had a problem with actually doing what I said I wanted to do... especially if there's hard work or unpleasantness involved.  But that's that and it can't be undone - it's all about learning the lesson and not repeating it.  There were highs during the year too, but, I'm a 'glass half empty' kind of girl, so I don't really think on the good things that often... I just harp on the bad. 

This is a time to look forward to what the next year and the next decade are going to hold.  I'm propping myself back up and I'm climbing on the horse again as of tomorrow.  I've spent the past couple of weeks eating out of my SAD fridge... eating or discarding all the non-primal things.  Tomorrow, I'll take my first "before" and "after" pictures... of the fridge and pantry.  I'll be going to the grocery store tomorrow to stock the fridge, freezer, and pantry with lots of good, primal stuff. 

At the core, here are my goals for 2011, primal and otherwise:

• Work towards not sweating the small stuff.  I always say I'm a type A+ personality working to be an AB.  I need to chillax, learn to roll with the punches better, and remember that there is a such thing as controlled chaos.  I think life will be pretty boring over the next 40 years if I try to stamp out any bit of the unexpected and, boy am I on that path right now.  Time for a detour.   
• Commit to the primal/paleo lifestyle and really give myself a chance.  I've done the yo-yo, falling off the horse, falling off the wagon thing for way to long now.  I want to give primal/paleo an honest-to-goodness chance and, by extension, hopefully give myself a chance. 
• Go on a real vacation that involves going to some place I've never been.  It's just me, I've never been a good saver, and it's not quite so much fun to do things alone, so I never go on a real vacation.  I can't help but think it would be a waste of money if I did it, etc, so I just stay home.  I've always felt that my A+ is smothering some adventuress within me and, this year, I want to let her out.  
• Complete a sprint triathlon with my friends.  I've wanted to to this for a long time now... years and years.  I've always felt like completing a triathlon would sooth some internal beast that's raging to get out.  This is the year to 'release the Kraken!' 
• Be open to new people, experiences, and life in general.  I tend to isolate and, with my biological clock ticking with the urgency of the timer on a stick of dynamite, I need to not isolate if I plan to do anything to quell the tick, tick, ticking.  I think there's magic in the air for me this year and, even if there isn't, who says I can't make a little for myself. 
• Be more positive.  Yeah, I admit it - I'm a Debbie Downer.  I've always been a pessimist and I do think I makes me a more unhappy person and makes situations more difficult than they have to be.  I'm also a worrier, which I imagine goes hand-in-hand with being a pessimist, and that leads to more negative thinking and heavy mental strain...it's cyclical.  Time to get off the merry-go-round. 

Happy New Year!  Here's to a smooth ride in 2011, with a few minor bumps to keep the ride interesting.  Hope the new year holds great things for you and yours.  Grok on!

Red and Blue Tomato and Olive Salad

I love tomatoes... they're one third of the best thing on earth.. the BLT.  They're not always good, as we know, but during the summer, they smell good and they taste just fantastic.  I would like to grow some for myself, but I have cats who get into everything and I hate for them to hurt themselves.  This week, I was able to get my hands on some really great beefstake tomatoes.  Given that I wanted some simple recipe for them and I was craving blue cheese, I came up with this.  I think it's easy enough and lightning fast and would go great with something off the grill.  Hell, you might even try grilling the tomatoes just a bit.

Ingredients:

• About 2 cups of tomato, cut in a large dice
• 3 T. chopped cured black olives
• 3 T. blue cheese crumbles
• 1/4 red onion, sliced very thinly
• 2 T. extra virgin olive oil
• 2 T. balsamic vinegar
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper

In the bottom of a bowl, add the olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Give it a good whisk.  Drop in the rest.  Using a fork or spoon, gently fold everything so things are well distributed and coated in the dressing.  That's it.

When I tasted it, I thought it would go great with a grilled steak.  Or maybe will some asparagus pieces.  Mmmm!

The olives and blue cheese are salty enough, but maybe some chopped bacon on top too would be good. 

Serve.  Eat.  Enjoy. 

Roasted Tomato Salsa

I've never been a huge fan of salsa.  When I want a snack, I never crave chips and salsa like I've heard some other people do.  But, salsa is a great flavor addition to dishes (meatloaf topping, eggs/omlets, vegetable flavoring, maybe a meat marinade) and is pretty much nothing but vegetables.  In the past, I've found a lot of salsa's to be too wet for my taste - they're almost runny, so when I ran across a roasted tomato salsa, I thought it would be perfect for my tastes.  The roasting would remove some of the water from the tomatoes and concentrate the flavor a bit. 

You can roast your tomatoes under a broiler if you want, but I have bad luck with the broiler - I always burn things - so I just roast them in a high oven. 

Ingredients:  

• 6 roma tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 an onion, chopped in a small dice
• 2 jalapenos, minced
• 1/4 c. chopped cilantro
• 1/2 t. salt
• uice of 1/2 a lime
• drizzle of olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 450. 

Slice 3 of your tomatoes thinly and lay them out in a single layer on a sheet pan, covered with parchment paper.  Drizzle the tops with a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper.  Put the tomatoes in the hot oven and let them roast until the skins appear shrivled and the tomatoes look sort of dry.  As I mentioned, they will burn, but we don't want burned tomatoes - just roasted - so keep an eye on them.

Grab a piece of foil.  In the center of the foil, place half the onions, half the jalapeno, and one of the garlic cloves.  Drizzle over a bit of oil and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Grab up the edges of the sheet of foil and pinch them together to make a hobo pouch.  Plop that in the oven, on an empty shelf.  When you take the tomatoes out, take the onion mixutre out. 

In a bowl, dump in the remaining onions, jalapeno, and garlic clove.  Dump in the hot onion mixture that we roasted and give it a little toss with the uncooked ingredients so that the raw onions can kind of wilt just a bit.  Dice the remaining 3 tomatoes up in a sort of small dice and put them in the bowl.  When the roasted tomatoes have cooled so you can handle them, dice them up as well and toss them in.  Add the cilantro and lime juice to everything and give it all a nice toss.  Taste it and add the desired salt and pepper. 

Serve.  Eat.  Enjoy!

Sweet and Sour Braised Cabbage

I'm kind of a grazer when it comes to recipes. If I see something that catches my eye (or my stomach really), I think of what I'd do differently and see if anyone's done it that way and then see if that inspires me to look at some other way to tweak the recipe. In the end, I have a recipe that is what I think of as the best of several recipes.

 

I'm a big fan of Health-Bent. Megan and Brandon come across as nice people and they always have great looking recipes. My father's side of the family is German, so I have sauerkraut juice running through my veins. When I saw this quick kraut recipe over at HB, I knew I had to try it out. But then, what about adding some caraway seeds - you know, like you'd find in rye bread which is fantastic with a Reuben? So I searched. Then I found a recipe with apples, onion, and caraway seeds. Mmmmm. But it used vegetable oil, too much apple when I'm trying to be low carb, not enough apple cider vinegar, and honey where it's not needed. After some tweaking, here's what I ended up with.

 

Ingredients:

• 1 T. butter
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1/2 - 2/3 of a large cabbage, shredded, similar to sauerkraut (I used what was left over after making Primal Stuffed Cabbage)
• 1 small to medium granny smith apple - a little sweet, a little tart - peeled, cored, and sliced into thick matchsticks (I quartered the apple and then sliced each piece of apple in thirds horizontally before slicing vertically)
• 6 T. apple cider vinegar
• 1 t. caraway seeds
• 1 c. liquid (water, chicken or veg stock or broth - whatever you have handy)
• Salt and pepper to taste

 

Melt the butter over a pan on medium heat. Add the caraway seeds and cook for 1 minute to let the heat help make them fragrant. Add the sliced onion, apple matchsticks, and shredded cabbage. Toss everything together and put a lid on the pot. Let the cabbage wilt down a bit over medium heat for 10 minutes. Stir the mixture, add the AC vinegar and liquid, give it another stir, and replace the lid. Let cook for another 20 to 30 minutes, until everything has wilted down and is tender and most of the liquid has evaporated. My batch made about 3 cups.

 

Eat! Enjoy!

 

P.S. - I thought it was better the second and third day. To reheat, I put it in a saute pan with some sliced, cooked bratwurst that I'd cooked at the same time I was braising the cabbage. Delicious.

Primal Stuffed Cabbage

I'd never made stuffed cabbage before, but I've wanted to make it many a time. I'd actually never even eaten stuffed cabbage until I made this, but I enjoyed it. It seems quite labor intensive and it kind of is, but not too much to turn me off. To me, the most difficult thing was coordinating all the steps, but in the end, I found it to be quite delicious and flavorful. I replaced the rice with cauliflower and I honestly didn't miss it. Great heated up the next day for lunch.

 

Ingredients:

 

Meat Mixture

• 1 T. olive oil
• 1 lb ground beef (or whatever ground meat you like)
• 1/2 an onion, diced finely
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1-1/2 t. salt (or to taste)
• 1/2 t. ground black pepper
• 1-1/2 cups cauliflower, riced, minced, shredded, pulverized, or however you get yours small
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. tomato sauce (recipe below)  

1 large head of cabbage

 

Tomato Sauce

• 1/2 onion, diced finely
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 28 oz tomatoes, with juice
• 3 T. tomato paste
• 2 sun dried tomatoes
• 1/4 c. vinegar, balsamic (for slightly sweeter) or red wine (for more tang)
• 2 T. parsley
• 1-1/2 t. Italian seasoning
• 1/2 t. oregano
• 1 t. ground black pepper
• 1 t. onion powder
• 1 t. garlic powder
• pinch of basil (I don't really like basil so I usually just use a bit at a time because it seems obligatory in a tomato sauce)
• pinch of crushed red pepper
• 1 cup-ish chicken stock (or whatever kind of stock you have)

 

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350.

 

For the cabbage, choose a larger one simply because it will have larger outer leaves which will make wrapping your little cabbage bundles easier. We need to get the leaves off the cabbage without tearing them too much and make them pliable enough for us to wrap around the meat mixture. To do this, we boil the cabbage just a bit. At this point, don't core the cabbage yet.

 

In a large, empty pot, place your head of cabbage. Cover the cabbage with cold water, just enough to come up to the core. This ensures that you have enough water to boil the cabbage, but not so much that retrieving the leaves is difficult. Remove the cabbage and put it in a bowl, since water will probably be draining out of it. Put a good dose of salt in the water and put it on to boil. While you're waiting for the water to boil, turn your cabbage so the core is facing you. Take a sharp knife and make four cuts around the core so you've basically made a square. You can cut in a circle if it makes you feel better, but the square is easier since it's just a stab, a couple of saws, and a turn of the cabbage. The point here is not to remove the core so you don't have to make your cuts on an angle. Straight down is fine. The point is to separate the outer leaves from the core so you don't have to try to cut them off while the cabbage is in the hot water and so you don't have to pull the cabbage out of the hot water, peel off a few leaves, put it back in the water for a bit, pull it back out, etc.

 

When the water is boiling, place your cabbage in, making sure the water covers the area around the core where we made our square. Let the cabbage sit a few minutes until the outer leaves start to look bright green - you'll notice the change - and the outer leaves at the top of the core have pulled away from the core a bit. Once that happens, take a pair of tongs and gently pull the outer leaves off the cabbage near the core. They should come off easily - maybe you'll need to do some manoeuvring of the cabbage with a spoon or something (roll it off the leaf you're trying to extricate) - otherwise, give it a few minutes more. Once you can get the leaves off, just place them in a bowl or plate to cool. Remove the rest of the leaves you'll need and then take the remaining cabbage out of the pot and set it aside to cool for use in some other recipe. When I made mine, I needed 9 cabbage leaves.

 

For the meat, in a large saute pan, heat the olive oil a bit over medium heat. Add both halves of the diced onion. Saute until they start to look translucent - about 5 minutes depending on the size of your dice. Add both garlic cloves and cook a minute or two more, until fragrant. Put half of the onions in your blender and leave the remainder in the pan. Add your beef, cauliflower, salt, and pepper. Cook until meat is brown and cauliflower is mostly translucent. At this stage, you're also waiting for the water in the cauliflower to release and cook off in the saute pan - otherwise, the mixture will be too soggy when we go to roll .

 

While the meat is cooking, toss your sun dried tomatoes and the juice from your 28 ounces of tomatoes into the blender with your onions. Pulse a bit until the mixture is smooth. Add your tomatoes, tomato paste, vinegar of choice, parsley, Italian seasoning, oregano, basil, black pepper, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder to the blender and pulse away until it's the desired chunkiness. I wanted mine pretty smooth for this so I just whizzed for a minute or two. At this point, take a cup of the sauce and put it into the cooking meat mixture but leave the rest in the blender. To the sauce remaining in the blender, add about a cup of chicken stock and give it another whirr, just to incorporate the stock. We want the tomato mixture to be pretty liquid because water will cook out of the sauce while it's in the oven and you still want to have some sauce for your stuff cabbage once it's finished cooking. Taste it. It should taste good to you - if not, adjust the seasonings to your preference, but go easy on the salt since we have a nice bit in the meat already.

 

When the meat is done, turn the heat off and wait for it to cool. While it cools, cut a V into each of your cabbage leaves to remove the tough core part. That won't roll well. Once you cut the V, the leaves should pretty much lay flat.

 

Get out your dutch oven. Put enough sauce in the bottom of the dutch oven to cover it in a thin layer. Once the meat is cool, add the two eggs and give it a quick mix.

 

On to the rolling: Lay out a single cabbage leaf with the V area close to you - it should resemble a fan. Right above the notch of the V, place 1/3 cup of the meat mixture onto the cabbage leaf. Take each flap of the V and fold it over top of the meat. Fold the left and then the right (or vice verse) side of the cabbage leaf over the meat mixture. At this point, the meat should be almost fully tucked inside cabbage and kind of remind you of a burrito. Gently take the meat pocket and fold it over the remaining section of the cabbage at the top. Take your beefy, cabbage-y burrito and place it in the tomato sauce in the dutch oven with the seam side down so that all the folded areas of the cabbage roll are tucked on the bottom of the dutch oven. Repeat with the remaining cabbage leaves. Once everything's rolled and in the pot, pour the rest of the sauce over the top, which should be enough to cover all of our cabbage stogies. Put the lid on the dutch oven and put it in the oven for 1 hour and 15 to 30 minutes or until all our cabbage bundles are soft and tender (gently pierce with the tip of a knife to gauge tenderness if you need to) and the tomato sauce has thickened.

 

Serve.  Eat.  Enjoy!