Posts Tagged ‘paleo’
Paleo turkey meatballs.
In diet, recipe on February 1, 2010 at 6:03 pmIt has been challenging but fun to pursue this Paleo diet. And part of the fun comes from concocting recipes that fulfill the Paleo requirements which ALSO aren’t boring as hell to make and eat.
So the Mrs. went out yesterday and did some grocery shopping, and brought back ground turkey. Turkey meatballs! Not that I couldn’t eat regular beef meatballs, but I wanted to see what I could come up with.
These are not egg-free (I had to throw an egg in for binder, that’s how it goes) but they are gluten-free.
You’ll need:
1 pound ground turkey
Minced garlic in olive oil
white pepper
black pepper
1 egg
16-20 almonds, roasted, non-salted
some white wine for cooking — doesn’t really matter what as long as YOU like it.
Start by putting your turkey in a bowl. Add the egg, as well as 1 tablespoon of the minced garlic. You could add more, but this worked out fine for my tastes. Add 1 tsp white pepper and 1 tsp black pepper.
Put your almonds in a food processor and process away! Make sure they are thoroughly ground, although a small chunk or two is not going to kill you. Add the ground almonds to the mixture.
Mix this all together and shape golf-ball sized meatballs. You should have roughly 14 once you’re done, give or take a meatball.
Heat some olive oil in a frying pan or saute pan and CAREFULLY put the meatballs in — you should just be able to fit them all if you’re using a 10″ or 12″ pan. These are going to be a little fragile until you sear a couple of sides, so let them brown (WATCH YOUR HEAT!) and tend to them carefully. Now is not the time to be on the phone or watch the kids.
Once they’ve browned on the outside, pour in about a cup of white wine and put a lid on the pan. Let this go for about five minutes and check your liquid level. You want to have a little liquid in the pan, versus there being nothing. If your liquid runs low, add more wine (to your discretion) and put the lid back on for another five. If you’re already out of wine because you drank the rest, add some water.
After the ten minutes of cooking, they should be cooked through. Take one out and check it. These won’t take long if the test meatball isn’t ready yet — give yourself another five minutes, covered, and then you should be done.
On Day 11, thoughts about Paleo…
In diet on January 25, 2010 at 9:38 pmSo today, as I’m writing this, it’s Day 11. Since I began (on January 15th), I have lost roughly six pounds. The only two changes I have made to my lifestyle are the diet, and that I have been doing cross-fit training with Wolf Brigade, a small gym here in Rochester.
The only cheating I have done was with rice, and that was by eating sushi. And the sushi I had two nights ago? The one roll I ate was made with brown rice. And I only had the one roll. So it’s cheating…but it’s not.
People have asked me, are you going to cheat/skimp a little? My response has been, I’d rather it be the exception than the rule. Sure, I’ll take a bite of that special dessert you made because you really want me to try it. But I’m taking a bite, not the whole serving. And if it comes to eating something completely off the diet (i.e. a special breakfast for my wife next month), yes, I will do that. But I’m going to adhere as strongly as possible up to that point, so that special skip meal is worth it, and so I feel like I deserved it.
I suppose the only other cheating I’ve done is my slight use of balsamic vinegar on a salad. And really, I’m sure there are some people that consider that a flagrant cheat. But until I’ve come up with a better salad dressing, I’m going to use a light splash of the balsamic to make my greens taste better.
Anyways, I got to thinking yesterday about the raw food diet. I don’t intend on undertaking that, but it got me thinking. If I’m doing this Paleo diet, and it’s working so well, and it’s healthy, and I’m seeing results, is the main reasoning for doing the raw food diet solely because you have a soft spot for animals? I just can’t quite figure out the rationale you’d have otherwise.
The Paleo Diet.
In diet on January 18, 2010 at 8:45 pmI’m sure this will evoke the same sort of reaction that one would get discussing veganism with most people I know, but try to keep an open mind.
A couple of weeks back, I read an article in the New York Times concerning the Paleo Diet, which the article somewhat likens to “eating like a caveman.” The whole concept behind the Paleo Diet is, to be short about it, you eat like hunter-gatherer tribes ate/eat. Meat, primarily lean meat; fruits, vegetables. No dairy (what were they milking? nothing), no refined sugars (sugars came naturally from fruit), no carbs/starches (at least not from GRAINS; you get natural carbs from fruits and vegetables). Nothing processed. If you could catch it or harvest it, there you go.
Now, this does not mean you harvest the stuff to make pancakes and maple syrup, and then eat a whole stack and say that’s okay. You have to keep the perspective that it’s how the cavemen would have eaten…with fire. I am not about to eat raw meat, although carpaccio is certainly acceptable.
Having read the article, I went out and bought the book by Loren Cordain, MD, “The Paleo Diet.” Amazon.com has it online, but I just went to the local Barnes & Noble and snagged it. I have to say, it makes sense, and a great deal of it. Enough, in fact, that I fully started the diet on the 15th of January.
It’s now the 18th, and I have faithfully (with the exception of having sushi, which included sushi rice, which is a GRAIN) stuck with it. Curbed the drinking tremendously (which I had already pretty much done before). And with three full days having passed already? I feel fantastic!
It is NOT an easy diet to attempt. It’s not that you can’t do it; executing it is fairly simple. For me, there’s so many distractions. I love cheeseburgers. LOVE them. However, I can’t have the dairy (cheese), nor can I have the bun (grains/processed flour), nor is the meat necessarily okay (if I’m lucky, it’s 20% fat content, but even then, I still can’t have it).
And it’s easy to get your hands on a cheeseburger. Believe me, I know this. From work to home, I can drive by — without making major detours on my route — four different fast food joints. It is quite the temptation sometimes.
So the trick (for me) is willpower, and it’s also something of a challenge to see what natural foods taste good and fit within the guidelines of the diet. For the most part, I’ve been eating a lot of chicken. Wegmans sells grilled chicken breasts, but they are very expensive. I unfortunately will not be able to buy some for cooking off until later on this evening, due to my work schedule. Vegetables are not a problem for me, as I basically love all veggies. I usually regard snacking on veggies with a bit of boredom, but baby carrots are starting to taste a lot better. Club soda is working for me in place of regular soda (although I did take a couple swigs of the wife’s soda today).
Overall, though, my energy level is up, and I feel cleaner. I’ll check back in the future and post on my progress.
