So, I was perusing my mounds of cooking magazines a few weeks ago and ran across this beauty. (BTW, I may have a problem… So. Many. Magazines.) It’s gorgeous, impressive, wonderfully Paleo, and more than a little intimidating.  For several weeks, it stayed at the back of my mind – I figured I’d wait for a dinner party or even Thanksgiving to try it out, but on Friday Central Market was running a special on pork tenderloins, so I figured I’d give it a try. All by myself.

What I didn’t realize when I bought all the supplies (rookie mistake = not THOROUGHLY reading the instructions before shopping), is that I would actually need to do a little butchery to make this happen.  As it turns out, it was a lot easier than I thought… I’m toying with the idea of a video instructional – anyone interested?

I didn’t really alter the recipe at all – it’s pretty stinking amazing to start with, so check it out on BonAppetit.com:

RECIPE: Bon Appetit Prosciutto-Wrapped Pork Loin with Roasted Apples

So, here’s a little photo account of the preparation. I’ll say up front that I really liked how this dish turned out… It’s a teensy bit complicated, but the flavors are lovely and you can’t beat the presentation. You can even make it a day ahead and then roast just before your dinner… perfect!

Let’s dig in… I’m a huge proponent of the mise en place style of cooking (French for “everything in place”). Especially with a dish with lots of components, I find it super helpful to get all my ingredients prepped and separated into individual containers. This can also help avoid any surprises mid-recipe when you realized that you totally forgot to buy mushrooms. Here’s my mise en place setup for this recipe:

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Team Tryptophan Chowing Down

Another crazy week down!  Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of hosting some fellow CrossFitters from CrossFit Central at the house for a Paleo potluck dinner… we’re all on the same Lean Turkey Challenge team (Team Tryptophan!), and we’ve been focused on amping up our workouts and dialing in nutrition leading up to the holiday season.  It’s been a great experience so far – met some cool new folks, trained with some awesome coaches, and I’ve even whittled the waist down just a bit over the past five weeks.  We had seven folks join in the fun on Tuesday, and everyone brought a yummy Paleo dish to share – woohoo! Here’s what we had:

• Paleo Spaghetti (Squash!) and Meatballs — Jay
• Cauliflower Fried “Rice” — Heather
• Homemade Almond Crackers — Kristin (sound yummy… check out her recipe!)
• Fresh Greens Salad w/Avocado — Jessica
• Brussels Sprouts with Apples & Ginger — Wendy

The food was absolutely delish, and I’m totally snagging the recipes… yum!  I made a few things as well:  oven-roasted chicken legs and thighs, spicy roasted pecans with cinnamon (which, by the way, I could NOT. STOP. EATING.), roasted sweet potatoes with apples, proscuitto-wrapped figs, and flourless chocolate cake bites.  We had a great time hanging out and sharing our CrossFit/Paleo stories – looking forward to the big end-of-challenge competition on Saturday… bring it on!! Go Team Tryptophan!

Jess and Kristin getting things going...

It’s not often that my professional and personal lives so totally interconnect, but in the case of bacon, there is a clear cross-over. I work in the IT industry (for the awesome IT software company Spiceworks – check out this video about zombies and, yes, bacon), and I work every day with IT pros all over the world. What brings them all together? Bacon. Yep, IT guys love bacon just about as much as we CrossFitting Paleo nuts do.  And why shouldn’t they? Bacon is quite simply one of the tastiest treats out there, and I snarf down every little scrap when the opportunity arises.

Now, I really do love bacon, but it would seem that there are some folks out there who REALLY love bacon, and they’ve got the merchandise to prove it. I recently purchased a variety of bacon-related items as prizes for our software conference a few weeks ago – I had no idea how much bacon-related paraphernalia was out there.  It’s a little scary. And a little awesome. Check out what I snagged… Not gonna lie, it would take a braver woman than me to try out the bacon-flavored toothpaste.

Bacon-Scented Soap Plus, the bar of soap looks like a huge slab of bacon. Lather up!

Bacon Flavored Mints  Hmm, not sure my vegetarian hubby would be super pleased if I started popping these.

Follow the jump for more awesome bacon-ness.

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Well, hello everyone!  Forget me?  I know it’s been ages since I posted. Apologies!  Life’s been a little on the crazy side for the past month – we’ve either been traveling or had house guests every weekend, and I just completed our annual big conference at my day job – an enormous amount of work, but a great success!  I’ll admit, when I’m in crazy-busy mode, I revert to my fall-back staple recipes and pretty much end up eating the same thing every day (roasted turkey and chicken, cast-iron steaks, LOTS of salad, etc.), so my culinary exploits have suffered just a bit.

My beautiful new spice management solution.

Now that I have a little time to breathe again, I’m back in the kitchen and back on the blog. It feels good to be back! 😉  I’ve spent the last few days cataloging more than 100 recipes that I want to try/adapt/Paleo-itize, so you’ll be seeing lots of fun stuff to come!  I’m thinking maybe some special Thanksgiving-inspired posts are in the near future.

As part of my “get back on the wagon” efforts, I spent the last few days organizing/cleaning out my kitchen. My favorite project? Tackling the MESS that was my spice drawer. There were spices in there that must have been 10 years old (ugh)… A bunch were my husband’s before we moved in together (more than three years ago). Plus, all these crazy, unusable spices were taking up a ton of valuable space in our not-so-large kitchen.

So… I went to the Container Store. I love that store and will be spending more time there over the coming weeks as I organize like a fiend. This time around, I found these awesome magnetic spice canisters that I can stick to the side of my fridge! Plus, I got to use my handy-dandy label maker, so it was a win all around. Love it! Easy to see what I have, everything’s at arm’s reach, perfect. More on the way for this week – have a fabulous day and stay tuned!

Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Apples

I’m back! Whew! So sorry for the lag in posting – it’s been a crazy month, and we’ve either been out of town or had house guests the last four weekends in a row. Tons of fun, but it didn’t leave a lot of time for experimenting in the kitchen.  Finally got some downtime with the hubs yesterday, and it really was a fantastic day – woke up to the rain (Rain? In Austin? Seriously??), went for a nice, easy Sunday run, practiced my double-unders & handstands, ate a delish bun-less burger at Hopdoddy (I tried the Llano Poblano – yum!), and then rounded things out with Halloween costume shopping on South Congress (going to rock it this year!). Just lovely. We capped off the day by cooking dinner together and then watching John Carpenter’s The Thing (the original)… really a fantastic film, and despite being made in the early 80’s, it totally stands up today.

So, back to the food!  We made a couple of new dishes yesterday – all the recipes are coming shortly! Let’s start with my favorite of the newbies: Roasted Sweet Potatoes and Apples. Both P.J. and I agreed that this one just tasted like Fall and would be a really great Paleo Thanksgiving side option.  Hope you like ’em! Check out the recipe after the jump…

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One seriously gorgeous cooked lobster.

As you all know, I recently made the leap into true carnivore-dom (yep, I’m totally calling that a word) by killing, cooking and eating my dinner for the first time: lobster! As it turns out, the cooking part of the meal was quite straightforward (aside from placing the live, moving lobster in the water – that one got my heart pounding a little)… if you can boil water, you can cook a lobster.   The bigger challenge is getting all that delicious meat OUT of the lobster’s shell so you can actually enjoy it.  Luckily, my brother Andy was on hand to do the dirty work of cracking shells and harvesting the meat.  Poor guy had no idea how much work he was getting into!

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Or, How I Killed and Cooked My Own Dinner.

Our seriously intimidating 2.5 pound live lobster.

I am a carnivore.  I love meat… grilled, cured, raw, stir-fried, dried, whatever. I’m a huge fan of all pork products, from bacon to jamon to pork belly to chops. Seafood? Yep. Poultry? Yep. I love it all, and I’ve eaten loads of it over the years, giving little to no thought about where that yummy meat was coming from.  As long as it tasted good, I wasn’t bothered.  Don’t get me wrong, I love animals and my dog, Piggy, is basically a full member of the family. That said, I’ve always been able to disassociate my love for animals with my love for eating them. I do truly believe that there is a natural order of things and that our bodies crave animal proteins to function at our very best.

Anyhoo, after years of guilt-free animal consumption, this meat-loving gal met the man of her dreams, and he turned out to be… (gasp!) a vegetarian. Who’d have thought I’d end up marrying my food opposite? Early on, P.J. and I found that we could happily co-exist – a carnivore and a vegetarian living in peace, albeit mostly on pasta at the time. Lately, as a result of P.J.’s influence and my transition to Paleo, I’ve been giving the origins of my food a lot more thought. I’ve been exposed to a whole new way of looking at meat – responsible, sustainable farming practices and cruelty-free animal husbandry. We visit the Austin Farmers Market every Saturday to stock up on grass-fed beef and pork, fresh eggs from happy pastured chickens, and loads of locally grown veggies.  When we eat out, we find ourselves gravitating to boutique restaurants serving locally grown and raised fare. It’s been a gradual evolution, and an important one.

On our recent trip to Martha’s Vineyard, while I was snarfing down a silly amount of lobster over three days, it occurred to me that I’d never actually killed my dinner myself. Ever. I can’t even recall cooking a lake fish that I caught as a child (this is probably mostly due to the fact that I was an AWFUL fisherman… fisherwoman?).  With such easy access to beautifully butchered and prepared meats, I’ve found it to be so easy to insulate myself from the realities of eating animal meat. It occurred to me on this trip that I should, at least once, do the deed myself… I needed to kill and eat my dinner. Myself. I see it really as an act of respect for the animals we consume… if I’m not “man” enough to kill the thing I’m eating, well then maybe I shouldn’t be eating it.  Now, I’m not advocating regular at-home butchery for everyone, but I think there’s something important and elemental about respecting our meat enough to be the one to kill it.

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Avocado, Grapefruit and Pomegranate Salad

I owe this tangy, satisfying salad all to my husband.  I’ll be the first to admit that these days, when I think about what to make for dinner, I think about meat. Mmmm, meat. That sometimes has the unfortunate side-effect, however, of leaving my vegetarian hubby out in the cold. Being that I’ve only recently come to enjoy the greener spectrum of foods, P.J. has been a great resource for figuring out tasty new veggie-friendly dishes, and he’s always game to experiment with whatever’s fresh.

On this particular occasion, we had been to the Farmers Market that morning and picked up some yummy local pomegranates…inspiration! This salad is his creation… it’s got a really nice tang to it, and the pomegranate seeds and almonds add a nice crunch of texture.  Follow the jump for the recipe!

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Paleo Sweet Potato Pancakes on the Griddle

Since going Paleo, I have to say that breakfast has become a whole different animal for me. I’ve always been a breakfast person, but for years, breakfast consisted of a glass of skim milk, a banana, and a cereal bar. Holy glycemic spike, Batman! I’d feel great for about 45 minutes, and then I’d be starving and dragging within a couple of hours… it was all I could do to make it to lunch.

These days, I get some pretty awesome sideways looks from my coworkers when I pull out leftover ribeye and salad to have for breakfast.  I’ll admit, it took some getting used to, but I feel so much more satisfied having some good protein and fat in the morning… I’m no longer starving by lunch, and my energy levels stay much more constant throughout the day. That said, every once in a while I’ll get a craving for some traditional breakfast food… e.g. pancakes.  Given that I love sweet potatoes, I figured I’d give some Paleo sweet potato pancakes a try for me and the hubby over the weekend.  There are tons of great recipes out there, and here’s my custom version, topped with sauteed cinnamon apples.

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Hatch Green Chile Breakfast Scramble with Avocado

It’s Hatch chile season here in Austin, which basically means that all the grocery stores are overflowing with these gorgeous green chiles.  I’ve only recently started using a lot of chiles in my cooking… I found them a little intimidating before I started using them regularly. Needless to say, I hadn’t yet experimented with this particular chile until this past Sunday.  The hubby and I were home enjoying some much-needed quiet time, and rather than go out for brunch, I decided to whip up a super simple breakfast scramble using one of the chiles I’d grabbed at the market.  I made this version vegetarian so we could both enjoy it, but you could definitely add some cooked bacon directly into the eggs if you’d like! Follow the jump for the scramble recipe.

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