Whoa...that was a long break

That was a longer break than we anticipated.  As our good friend always says, "life got in the way".  It's been a good one though....friends in town for several weeks and things like that.  Oh, work for both of us got crazy and the male half's dental surgery took much longer to heal than the previous surgery.  

We've adjusted our diets to mostly Consolidation with some Paleo meals.  For the most part, we only have whole wheat products once or twice a week if at all.  With this adjustment, we've been able to keep our weight stable.   

We haven't cooked much....usually twice a week now.  We do have a few new recipes to work on and post.  Oh and sadly, my illness lasted about 3 weeks and during that time I gained a couple pounds :-(  Once the crazy work schedule goes back to normal, more cooking will happen and we'll swing back to a more Paleo/Cruise diet.  

Hoping to get those new recipes posted soon!  

Taking a Couple of Days Off

Ugh, our household has been hit with the flu....it's been going around here in Hawaii as well as the mainland U.S.  We'll be taking a couple of days off to hopefully get better really quickly!

We'll work on the Cauliflower recipes soon!

Take care of yourself...especially those in the really cold parts of the U.S.!

Dukan Greek Chicken Stew (it's a Paleo - ish recipe too!)

Greek Chicken Stew

We loved this recipe!

His only having a fruit smoothie and protein bar all day could have been the reason the male half of this couple loved this recipe.  It was pretty good.  This stew was perfect for us.  Easy to make, tasty, light but it warmed us up during that cold, windy weekend.

We found this recipe while googling "healthy stew recipes" -- as soon as we saw how easy it was and it had cauliflower, we knew we had to try it.  The male half loves cauliflower.   Our finished dish did not look nearly as good as the photo on the NY Times site though.  We left out the olives (male half doesn't like them and the author mentioned the salt content and we need to be a little more careful with our salt intake) and the feta cheese.

We also pulsed our tomatoes more than the author of the recipe did because the male half of this couple doesn't like chunky tomatoes.  This recipe is both a Dukan recipe (Cruise, Consolidation and Stabilization) and is a Paleo - ish recipe.  Use organic tomatoes and free range chicken to get closer to a Paleo meal.  We found some Paleo people against vinegars and some use in moderation.  This recipe calls for 2 T. which to us is not a whole lot.

RECIPE:
Serves: 2 if you're not having any starch (this actually could have been three servings, but as mentioned above, the male half only had a fruit smoothie and protein bar that day and I didn't want to leave one piece of chicken left on the pot -- I was stuffed and uncomfortable for a while after dinner -- note to self: save the one piece of chicken)
Prep Time: 10 minutes or so
Cook Time: 1.5 - 2 hours

1 T. extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
6 - 8 boneless and skinless chicken thighs, some of the excess fat removed, rinse and pat dry (we used 6)
2 T. red wine vinegar
1 - 28 oz. can organic chopped tomatoes, with juice, pulsed in a food processor
1/2 t. cinnamon
sea salt and pepper to taste
1/2 t. dried thyme
2 cups cauliflower florets, sliced about 1/2" thick
1/2 T. dried parsley

The original recipe has you frying your chicken in a tablespoon of olive oil but we used our nonstick pan and fried the chicken without spray or using oil on the pan.  Fry chicken over medium high heat, browning each side, in batches if necessary.  Takes approximately 5 minutes on each side.  Remove the chicken and place on a plate.  Pour off any excess fat from the pan leaving the fried bits in the pan.  Add vinegar to pan and scrape up all the bits from the bottom on the pan.

Add the olive oil and turn heat down to medium.  Add the onion and a generous pinch of salt and cook, stir often and scrape the bottom of the pan until it begins to soften, about 5 minutes.  Turn the heat to low, cover and let the onions cook for about 10 minutes, stirring from time to time until lightly browned and very soft.  Add the garlic, stir together for about a minute, until the garlic is fragrant.  Add the tomatoes and their juices, cinnamon, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.  Bring to a simmer and simmer 10 minutes, stirring from time to time, until the mixture is reduced slightly.

Return the chicken to the pot along with any juices accumulated on the plate.  If necessary, add enough water to barely cover the chicken.  We didn't need to add water.  Bring to a simmer, reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add the cauliflower and simmer for another 20 minutes or until the cauliflower is tender and the chicken is very tender.  We cooked ours about 20 minutes longer than the recipe recommended, it took a while for our cauliflower to cook.  Stir in the parsley, taste and adjust seasonings.

We ate this as is, no starches or grains.  We save the leftover tomato sauce in the pan for an omelet the next day.

According to the author of the recipe, the stew keeps for 3 to 4 days and freezes well.  We ate all of ours but hope to make more!

Enjoy...we sure did!

Product Review: XyloSweet by Xlear

Photo linked from Amazon.com

We use Xylitol and Truvia in our kitchen -- we actually prefer Xylitol.  It looks like refined sugar, it has worked well for us in baked and cooked items.  When we were first introduced to Xylitol, we bought the Now brand.  We liked the results -- but it's pricey, especially when baking.  Using a teaspoon here and there for some of our Japanese stewed dishes isn't too bad, but when you start using cups at a time, that $11 - 2 lb. bag goes fast!

This past Christmas we made Candied Pecans.  We used the last of our Now brand Xylitol for our sample batches with nice results -- they ended up looking like Glazed Pecans.  Knowing we had to produce a lot of pecan batches, we decided to try the Xlear XyloSweet Xylitol to save some money.  It's Xylitol in pure form and we've used the Xlear Nose Spray.  This was a mistake.  Well, let me say first, using this XyloSweet in things like our Chicken Hekka seemed to work just fine -- you really don't use much.  However, when baking our Candied Pecans, the XyloSweet batch starts to burn within the first 15 minutes and when the glaze dried it looked like our glazed pecans but 5 weeks old!  The batches made with the Now brand turned out perfect.  We were able to bake the pecans the full hour, no burning and the glaze was beautiful -- even after a few days.

So, for that reason, we do not recommend this brand.  Spend the extra money for another brand like Now.

Dukan Persian Turkey Burgers (it's a Paleo recipe too!)

Persian Turkey Burgers

We have mixed feelings about this one...

It was a little on the plain side but it's always nice to try something different.  We went back to see if we did something wrong and we probably could have increased the amount of each spice since the recipe calls for 1 pound of meat and the ground turkey at Safeway only comes in 1.25 lbs -- we didn't want to save .25 lbs. of ground turkey, although we could have used it for something.  It could also be because we used ground turkey instead of ground beef.

Anyway, we also didn't try any of the sauce recipes listed on the recipe page and the yogurt sauce would've been a good one to try with these burgers.  So, this wasn't a bad recipe, the burgers were juicy, just not one that knocked our socks off because it was bursting with flavor.  We'd definitely try this recipe again.

The nice thing about this recipe -- it fit both the Dukan and Paleo diets without any changes...well, except we didn't cook ours with ghee.

RECIPE:
Serves 3-4 (we ate it as a Cruise/Paleo meal, so with veggies only, no starch)
Prep Time: less than 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10-20 minutes

1 1/4 lb. ground turkey or 1 lb. ground beef
1 small onion, diced finely
1 egg
1 t. kosher or sea salt
1/2 t. black pepper
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. dried oregano

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.  Form patties (we made 8 small patties).  Heat grill pan over medium.  If you're on the Dukan Diet, spray your pan with a little bit of nonstick spray.  If you're on Paleo, use your choice of fat.  We lightly brushed on a small amount of extra virgin olive oil on our pan for the first round of patties and didn't need any additional oil for the second round of patties.

Cook patties until they are half cooked, then flip patties over and cook until done.  We usually cook ours about 3-4 minutes per side or until there are no pink juices coming out of the patties.

We had ours with steamed broccoli.  The leftovers were broken up into small pieces and made into a Persian Burger Scramble for my breakfast.

Dukan and Paleo Pulled Pork

Easy Pulled Pork

We loved this recipe!

Ok, first of all, our first time on Dukan, we stayed away from fatty meats...hardly used our slow cooker.  This time around, instead of just a 30 minute walk per day, we are trying to do 30-45 minutes of aerobic exercise which is why during Cruise, we weren't afraid to have pulled pork.   I usually eat Pork Adobo once a week from a little Filipino shop near my work -- it's made with pork shoulder -- I discard all the fat and eat only the meaty pieces and I've lost almost half the weight I set out to lose.   If you've still got a lot of weight to lose and you're not doing some sort of almost daily aerobic exercise, you may want to wait until Consolidation to try this recipe.

The first week of January it was rainy and windy here...almost every day.  It seemed like the temperature was always 68 degrees when I checked my phone.  So, Thursday, our usual 'meal planning' day, we pulled out a Greek Chicken Stew recipe and this Crock Pot Pulled Pork recipe.  They were perfect for the rainy, windy and chilly weekend.

We found this recipe soon after we decided to start easing into the Caveman way of eating.  Saved it and didn't intend to use it until we lost all our weight and truly eased into the Caveman diet.  We couldn't wait :-)  This recipe is very easy and very tasty -- oh and it's a lot for two people.  We froze half the pulled pork and the other half we ate for two meals with no rice or bread.

Mix your dry rub.

1/2 the onions line the bottom of the crock pot

Rub all your dry rub on your pork (before placing it in the pot of course)

Place the rest of your onions on the top of your pork, cover
crock pot and cook according to the directions below

RECIPE:
Serves: a lot (see paragraph above)
Prep Time: 10-15 minutes (we cut some fat from our pork shoulder)
Crock Pot Cook Time: 5-6 hours on high, then 3-4 hours on low
6 Qt. Crock Pot used

4-5 lb. pork shoulder/butt (some fat removed), rinse and pat dry
1-2 yellow onions, sliced (we used one)

Dry rub:
3 T. chili powder
1 t. coriander
2 t. ground cumin
2 t. onion powder
1 T. dried parsley
1/4 t. chipotle chili powder
2 t. kosher or sea salt

Mix all dry rub ingredients together, set aside.  Rub dry rub all over pork.  Be sure to use all the dry rub.  We let our pork sit out on the counter for about 20 minutes.  Line your crock pot if you have liners (they make clean-up so easy!).  Place half your onions on the bottom of the crock pot.  Place your pork in the pot.  Place the remainder of the onions on top of the pork, cover and cook on high for 5-6 hours (we cooked it for 5 hours).  Then cook for another 3-4 hours on low (we cooked it for 3 hours).  After the 8 hours of cooking, we opened the pot, checked to be sure the pork was falling apart, then pushed the pork into the juice.  Turn your pot to warm and cover to let the top part of the pork that wasn't in the juice to soak up some liquid.

In the meantime, prepare any veggies you will be having with your pork.  Depending on which diet you're on and if you're not trying to lose weight, you can make a gravy with the drippings and use sparingly.  We dipped our pork in the juice to add a little moisture...it was very tasty just like that!

Remove pork from crock pot, take two forks and shred pork removing fat as you go.  We had this with sauerkraut and broccoli.  Made an omelet with some of the leftovers and are considering lettuce wraps with the half we froze.

Enjoy...we sure did!

Dukan Update

Hope everyone's doing well with their weight loss and healthy eating!  We've been sticking to our healthy eating but I've plateaued....but I've also skipped exercising this past week.  This weekend it's back to exercising and the male half of this couple and I have decided to have an "exercise together" night each week.  We're still trying to figure out what we'll be doing -- we're looking for something free of course and something he won't become bored with.  

This weekend there will also be not a lot of cooking in our house.  The male half had his second to his last dental surgical procedure done -- so he can't really eat much.  He's requested a non-Dukan and non-Paleo dish -- rice, since it's easy to mash in his mouth.  I'm sure by next weekend we'll be able to make regular dishes.  

This plateau has put a bump in my Dukan road.  We're supposed to go into the Consolidation Phase next week -- late last year our plan was to transition to a Dukan/Paleo lifestyle once I got to my weight goal, but since I am not there yet, we'll be on Dukan for a little longer.   I was so looking forward to adding my Candied Pecans made with Xylitol to my diet!

This time around I'm not feeling discouraged by a plateau or not reaching my goal...I know adding back aerobic exercise will get me there!  We're hoping to get in a hike sometime this weekend -- will post photos if we do!