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!