Articles Page - Paleo Diet Info.

We've mentioned this page before, but now that we have a page to collect articles and posts, thought we'd post it.  We read a couple times on Flamidwyfe's blog about the Paleo diet...sounded interesting, so almost an entire year later I decided to look into what the Paleo Diet was all about.  This is one of the first article/post we came across.  It was informative, in layman's terms and humorous (not to the point the humor discredited the post).  I emailed it to the male half of this couple and said "let's discuss over lunch".  He read it and that same day we were discussing the pluses and minuses of trying the Paleo Diet.  

The male half actually read up on information similar to the Paleo Diet when his father had bypass surgery years ago.  The dietician his father saw not only recommended exercise and a low fat diet, but he encouraged "cleaner" eating.  While the male half hasn't committed to trying the Paleo Diet 100%, he will eat the Paleo/Dukan meals we make and has even tried the baked goods I've been baking for him.

Our lives have become a little crazier, so we have even less time to cook but as soon as things get back to normal I am going to push for us to eat Paleo for all meals.

Hope you enjoy nerdfitness' rundown of the Paleo Diet.

Dukan Crockpot Enchilada Stew (it's Paleo too!)

Enchilada Stew

We loved this recipe!

This recipe came from a Paleo site, Paleomg.com.  She blogger is pretty funny and we've tried a couple of her recipes...very good!  We actually tried this recipe back while I was getting over an illness so we never worked on a post for it.  It was very tasty, but a little too spicy for us so we added an additional can of tomato sauce.

This made a LOT of food for the two of us.  Leftovers went into a frittata and the rest in the freezer. The male half of this couple enjoyed his stew with a couple slices of avocado.  We left out the coconut oil since we didn't have any, but the stew still came out great!

RECIPE:
Serves a lot (depends on how you eat it...I ate it as is, the male half had his with brown rice.)
Prep time: 10-30 minutes (we removed fat from our chicken)
Cook Time: 6-8 hours on low

Enchilada Stew

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (some fat removed, too much fat removed will result in a very dry chicken dish)
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 small green bell pepper, chopped
2 jalapenos, seeds removed, chopped
1 - 4oz can chopped green chiles
1 - 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 - 7 oz can tomato sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. ground cumin
1 T. chili powder (use less if you prefer less heat)
2 t. dried oregano
salt and pepper, to taste
bunch of cilantro, for garnish, chopped
avocado, sliced (if you're not in Cruise)

Rinse and pat dry chicken.  Place chicken in a lined crock pot.  Add the rest of the ingredients on top the chicken in any order.  Cover and cook on low for approximately 6 hours.  Shred chicken before serving.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Crockpot Cilantro Lime Chicken (it's a Paleo recipe too!)

Crockpot Cilantro Lime Chicken

We have mixed feelings about this one...mostly because we didn't follow the recipe all the way and we're guessing that may be partly why it didn't come out to our liking.

This is a very flavorful marinade, but it was too lime-y for us.  It may be because we used 8 boneless chicken thighs instead of a whole chicken...but one of us doesn't like looking at or touching a whole chicken!  I'm hoping someone else will try it with the whole chicken because the recipe we found, the photo on the blog made the chicken look so yummy!   Here's the original recipe.

Here's what we did:

RECIPE:
Serves 4
Prep time: 15 minutes plus overnight marinading
Cook time: 6 hours on low

8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, most of the fat removed

Dry Rub ingredients:
1 t. pure sea salt
1 t. black pepper
1 t. chili powder
1 t. cayenne powder
1 t. ground cumin

1/2 c. lime juice (about 4 limes for us...if we try this again, we've going to try 1/4 c. lime juice)
2 generous handfuls of fresh cilantro, chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 T. extra virgin olive oil (optional if you're on Dukan)

Rinse and pat dry your chicken.  Place in a large ziplock bag (we don't recommend using a crock pot


liner - ours leaked.  Apply the dry rub onto the chicken, make sure to put an even coating on the chicken.  In a food processor, combine lime juice, cilantro, garlic and olive oil.  Pour marinade over chicken.  Seal bag pressing out as much air as you can.

Marinade chicken overnight.  The next day, place chicken in crockpot along with any leftover marinade, cook on low for 6-8 hours.  We cooked ours for 6 hours.

Hope this turns out better for everyone else...maybe one day I'll get over my whole chicken fears!

New Page - Articles

For the past couple of months we've been reading online articles on various blogs about the Paleo or Caveman Diet.  We started with Flamidwyfe's blog and branched out from there.

We haven't gone completely Paleo yet...still trying to lose weight -- so we're on the Dukan Diet but we try to make our meals as Paleo as we can without adding too much fat.  It's been a challenge, but a good one.  I wish I kept all the articles I came across RE: Dukan and Paleo -- but I didn't.

Today we decided to add a new page to our blog to collect some of the articles that continue to inspire us.  There's just a few articles but as we add articles, we'll post about it too.  A note about us and the articles we come across -- like many others, we always take in information with a grain of salt understanding that many times an article is one person or persons opinion or views on the subject or what they researched.  We try to do additional research to weigh various opinions on the subjects, etc.  We are not endorsing any opinions shared in these articles -- these are articles that inspire us to research more, understand more, care more, etc.

Our first addition is this article on inflammation we found on Deliciously Organic's blog/recipe site.   Inflammation is something we dealt with a lot in the past and we're all for natural cures.  During the Attack and Cruise Phases of the Dukan Diet, we didn't notice as much inflammation.  At my lowest weight during Dukan, I was feeling great.  After spending some time in Consolidation and adding back a serving of whole wheat to our diets, the inflammation returned.  We noticed a decrease in inflammation after experimenting with Paleo (reducing our grains to almost nothing).

We hope to move towards a completely grain-free diet in the near future.  For now, we eat grain-free as often as we can!  Less tummy bloating for us :-)

Cauliflower Fried Rice (Dukan and Paleo)

Cauliflower Fried "Rice"

We loved this recipe!

Thank you Nomnompaleo.com for sharing your recipe!  We can't wait to try different variations of this fried "rice".  We may have mentioned before, but we are not big fans of cauliflower, don't really care for the taste.  In the past, we never made cauliflower at home, it's expensive here in Hawaii and it's usually a side dish at a restaurant, steamed with not much seasoning.  We've experimented with Cauliflower Pizzas and now enjoy cauliflower!  (We'll post the Cauliflower Pizza recipe soon).

We did change the recipe a tiny bit to accomodate either what we could find at the Farmer's Market and what we had in our fridge.

We made the Paleo version of this recipe but it's easy to change it to a Dukan recipe...many Paleo recipes are!  For Dukan Dieters, omit the bacon if you're worried about fat and use a lean meat or you can go meatless too.  Also use non-stick spray instead of the bacon fat.  Easy!

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6
Prep time: at least 20 minutes (we have a tiny food processor, the male half said we could buy a larger one if I start using ours on a regular basis :-))
Cook time: around 20-30 minutes (sorry I forgot how long it took us)

1 small head of cauliflower, washed and cut into florets
3 slices of uncured bacon, diced small
2 eggs, beaten
1 inch piece of ginger, grated fine
1/2 yellow onion, diced small (you can use a whole one)
4 oz. shiitake mushrooms, sliced
2 green onions, chopped
2 T. fresh cilantro, chopped
2 T. fresh basil, chopped
kosher salt and black pepper to taste
splash of vinegar
splash of Red Boat Fish Sauce (don't leave this out!)

Pulse cauliflower florets until they are the size of rice (we over pulsed ours).  Cook bacon in a pan over medium heat.  While the bacon is cooking, chop the rest of your ingredients.  Remove cooked bacon and some of the bacon fat (leave enough to cook the egg).  Beat eggs, add salt and pepper, then fry a thin omelet in the pan.  My mother used to chop the omelet up into small pieces when the egg was almost done cooking, so we did the same.  Remove egg from pan.

Turn the heat up to medium-high (add bacon grease or spray pan with non-stick spray) and add chopped onions with a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper.  When the onions are softened, add the mushrooms and stir fry until mushrooms are almost cooked through.  Add ginger, stir fry for 30 seconds.  Add cauliflower and some salt and pepper, stir.  Put a lid on your pan and lower your heat to low and let cook for about 5 minutes.  When the cauliflower is tender, add the egg and herbs.  Mix, add salt and pepper if needed.  Top off your fried "rice" with a splash of fish sauce and serve.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Blog Name Change and an Update

Hope everyone had a nice and Dukan successful weekend.

This morning we were fiddling with out blogger template, trying to change things up a bit and decided to rename our blog (the URL will remain the same for now).  Decided to simplify our blog name to "Dukan-ing in Hawaii".

Our recipes can be used in many different locations around the world but for the most part, we usually change recipes because we're using what's available in Hawaii and what's not going send us to the 'poor house'.  Every place has its perks and challenges when it comes to ingredient availability -- for Hawaii it's being a state that imports a lot of its goods and our humid weather.  Don't get us wrong, we rather run around in flip flops and shorts pretty much every weekend of the year versus dealing with snow and temperatures below zero!

So, the big hula competition is over....we enjoyed over 18 hours of live hula coverage!  It was a long hula day yesterday but we managed to bake a Paleo Banana Bread for the male half of this couple.  That recipe will be posted in a week or so.  Dukan'ers can enjoy this recipe during Consolidation and Stabilization...and it doesn't have any grains or add sweeteners!

This coming weekend will be a cooking weekend.....hope to have more recipes up throughout April.   We're keeping up our 30 minute cardio workouts almost daily.  We haven't done a Pure Protein day in forever -- will have to plan one this week.  Speaking of food, the weather has been unusually cold in Hawaii for this time of year (with the exception of yesterday).  We've been dipping down into the low sixties, upper 50's...which I know doesn't seem bad compared to other places, but it's just something we're not used to nor are we prepared with a lot of warm clothes.  I looked back to what we ate in February and March -- mostly Nabe (Japanese hot pots).  It was a way for us to eat healthy, simple and warm!

Dukan Avocado Tartare (it's Paleo too!)

Avocado Tartare

We loved this recipe!  Well, I loved it and the male half thought it was tasty even though it has raw onions in it.

We used a recipe we found on Foodland's website and tweaked it a bit (and at home we refer to it as "Avocado Salsa".  We used less oil, less lime juice and left out the fresh oregano since we didn't have any.   Even with less lime juice, it was still very tart and tangy...we'll probably use even less next time.    We actually used way too much cilantro...we didn't want to waste it...the recipe below shows the correct amount you may want to use.

For Dukan Dieters, you may want to wait until Consolidation and Stabilization to consume this due to the fat content of the avocado and the amount of olive oil used.

RECIPE:
Serves 4-6
Prep Time: approx 20 minutes

2 ripe, large avocados, pitted and diced (skin removed)
1 jalapeno or serrano chile (seeds removed), diced (we used a jalapeno)
1/3 c. fresh cilantro, chopped
1/3 c. red onion, chopped
1/8 c. fresh lime juice (approx 1 lime)
salt and pepper to taste
1 t. Tamari (wheat free, gluten free low sodium soy sauce)
1/2 - 1 T. olive oil

Mix all ingredients to together.  Add more salt and pepper if needed.  Chill for about an hour and serve.

This Avocado Tartare goes great with our Seared Ahi Tuna Recipe!  You can use it on tacos, quesadillas, served over a southwestern style steak, etc.

Enjoy...we sure did!