Something for You, Me and the Cat

I'm making beef heart tonight. It took me pretty much TWO hours to cut up two big hearts. 

Cooking takes up a lot of time in this house, but then again, we do almost everything from scratch and it is a conscious choice we made when we moved here. 

The nice thing about cooking like this is that nothing goes to waste. Nothing. I guess that is part of the reason cooking is so time consuming. 

The meat is enough for two dinners for us. The trimmings are for the cats (they eat almost exclusively raw meat or fish). The fat is rendered to tallow, that we use for frying eggs, meat and vegetables (as I am off all dairy, this is a "necessity"). The scraps that are left after the fat - crispy brown pieces of fat - are salted and eaten like popcorn... Yum!

Dinner, cat food and tallow

Day 7 - Phew!

One week of food photography comes to an end. Quite nice to document my food for a week and I just had a look back at last year's Whole 30 in February when I did the same. I think the main difference is the choice of seasonable vegetables (hence the constant reoccurrence of cabbage and carrots) and that the food is now prepared for a significantly larger family, so I can no longer do my fancy single portion omelettes.

Breakfast today was prepared by Simon: banana and butternut squash omelette with bacon and salad.

Mummy and baby portion of omelette

Nice hot stock for lunch with mince, left over mash, some rice and salad.

Only three for lunch

Simon wins the fanciest dinner of the week with his skewered chicken burgers. They were topped with sweet and sour sauce and served with roasted vegetables.

Definitely try this garlicky sweet and sour sauce: 

1 grated apple

2 tbs chopped raisins 

1 clove garlic, minced

2 tbs chopped fresh coriander

2 tbs apple cider vinegar

2 tbs water

1tsp tapioca flour to thicken the sauce

Combine all the ingredients in a small pan and let cook for approx. 15 minutes. Take the pan off the heat. Stir tapioca flour into a tablespoon of water and pour this mixture into the pan to thicken. Done!

Day 6

It's day 6 and breakfasts seem to be on repeat. Probably because we have a winning concept going.

Breakfast was chia seed porridge. This time with dried orange peel, avocado, kiwi, apple and orange. Nice tangy flavour to it.

Straight chia porridge before the flavours are added

Looking a bit more appetising once the fruit is there!

Lunch was enjoyed at Little T's nursery again, hence no photo, but it was pretty good today: "taco soup", which was basically minced beef soup. Not too bad, I just skipped the bread and tortillas.

It was my turn to cook dinner and fish seemed suitable for a Friday. I made herring in creamy, dill tomato sauce with cauliflower/celeriac/butternut squash mash… and cabbage salad.

Fancy plate for Friday night dinner

Day 5 Already

Day five of my little photo project and I forgot to take my lunchtime photo. Tsk!

It was egg rotation this morning. This time a vegetarian omelette with grated pumpkin and yellow beetroot, topped with cheese. Served with cabbage/beetroot salad, apple, kiwi and fermented carrots. This was then complemented with some liver pâté (which didn't make the picture).

Lunch was another mugful of bone broth goodness with leftover veggies, tongue and fish.

One of our favourite sources of protein at the moment is organic minced hen. The mince comes from retired laying hens and it feels good that they are not 'destroyed' when they are done laying eggs.

For dinner, we used the mince for hen burgers with broccoli/spinach mash and more cabbage salad. If you are into cauliflower mash, then you definitely need to try broccoli and spinach mash with a knob of butter, salt and pepper. Easily made from frozen vegetables; nutritious and delicious.

Day 4 of my Food Diary

It's Wednesday and it's been a good food day, but then everyday is. We take turns cooking and we all have our different styles, which spices things up and adds a lot of variety to the meals - apart from the ever present cabbage salad :)

Breakfast was a cold chia seed porridge with apple, orange, banana and coconut flakes. Basically a rerun from Monday, but slightly different, as mother Paulsson made it.

I spent another day at Little T's nursery, so this time I packed my own lunch… It consisted of omelette, carrot sticks and some liver pâté.

Dinner was sliced beef tongue, sweet potato and celeriac mash and cabbage salad. Yum! Cecilia will have to share the recipe for beef tongue some time. It is surprisingly tender and all I know is that it involves a slow cooker for several hours.

Day 3

Ok... Day 3 and it was Simon's and my turn to cook for the rest of the bunch. We went for some easy choices:

Breakfast was lamb mince in the oven with egg cooked on top, served with the usual cabbage salad and coffee. 

I may need to work on presentation skills, but it tasted excellent!

Tora is settling in at nursery this week, so I had some lunch there, which was not worthy of a photo, and then a mug of broth when I got home (imagine photo of steaming hot broth in big mug here).

Dinner was pollock and salmon soup. Really easy! Just chop up and fry vegetables of choice (e.g. onion, celery, carrot and parsnip), pour over some stock, season with salt, pepper, ginger, lemon, garlic. When the veggies are cooked through, add diced fish and let it cook for a few minutes. Lastly, add coconut milk or double cream if you like. Done in less than 30 minutes and can be varied endlessly.

Day 2

Oh dear... It's only day two and I almost forgot to take my pictures. Not good. There is a clear pattern emerging on the meals already: cabbage features heavily, it is so good raw!

Breakfast was a bowl of chia seed "porridge": chia seeds blitzed in a blender with some kefir, avocado, coconut milk, banana, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, then left overnight in the fridge. Topped with apple, orange, yoghurt and coconut flakes.

There was hot bone broth for lunch, this time with leftover burgers and roast vegetables.

And then finally, dinner was homemade "falukorv" (recipe in Swedish here), broccoli/cauliflower/butternut squash mash and cabbage salad.

Picture Food Diary - Day 1

I thought it was about time that I shared an example of our weekly menu, as some people wonder how we can survive without bread and various other types of food. Hopefully this will provide some inspiration to try out Paleo food. Starting today, I'll be sharing photos of our food for one week… well, the food that I eat anyway, since we all have our own variations of what we eat.

Breakfast eggs sizzling away on the wood fired stove

For a special weekend breakfast, we had fried eggs, home-cured bacon, some cabbage salad and a few slices of apple. Enjoyed with glass of kefir and cup of coffee. It was Sunday after all.

Lunch comes served in a giant mug. Today it included ox tongue, chopped roasted vegetables, a tablespoon of rice  and some other bits of leftovers. This was then topped with hot bone broth. Simple and definitely needed in this cold weather!

Dinner was beef burgers, big spoon of garlic mayo and cabbage two ways: sautéed and chopped in a salad with carrots and beetroot.

Eating It All/ Här Käkar Vi Allt

As you may know by now, we're fans of using all the odd bits of the animals that we eat. The same goes for the veg. I was especially proud of this evening's side dish:

Sorry, not my best pic...

What is it? The leaves of two cauliflowers, fried with copious amounts of onions, ghee and spices. Enough as a side dish for five hungry people, plus leftovers. We're saving the actual cauliflowers for some cauli rice tomorrow. Cheap but oh so cheerful food, check! 

****SVENSKA****

Jag predikar ju jämt om att vi ska käka hela djuret. Detsamma gäller ju givetvis även grönsakerna som vi äter. Jag är speciellt stolt över middagens tillbehör. Jag tog blasten från två blomkålshuvuden och stekte den med en massa lök, ghee och kryddor. Det räckte som tillbehör till fem hungriga personer, samt rester. Vi sparar blomkålshuvudena till morgondagens blomkålsris. Riktigt nöjd med mig själv och min påhittighet. ;-)

Pure Taste Restaurant Visit

Where: Westbourne Grove, London, W2 4UP

When: 30.12.14 at 20.00

http://puretasterestaurant.com

A while back, we got the opportunity to sponsor a Paleo-friendly restaurant in London and we jumped at the opportunity. The sponsorship package we chose gave us a starter and dessert for free, once the restaurant opened. After months of waiting, the email finally arrived announcing that Pure Taste was opening. We immediately booked ourselves a table and poured over the online menu in anticipation.

Last week, we finally ate at the Pure Taste Restaurant in West London and we were not disappointed.  Unfortunately, Cecilia is in Sweden so it was only the London contingent that could go.

We did some more soul searching over the menu and then made our choices and the waiter gave us a great recommendation for a Spanish red wine, which would go with our meaty starters and mains. Then they started us off with a complementary mise en bouche with salmon sashimi and wasabi puree. So refreshing!

Then on to the bread basket: Italian breadsticks, coconut flour flatbread with onion and cumin seeds and Rosemary plantain crackers, served with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and tzatziki. Our favourites were the warm Italian breadsticks, which had loads of Italian spices on them, but we were really intrigued by the plantain crackers which were extra crunchy and similar to Swedish knäckebröd.

For starters Cat had the free-range charcuterie, garlic stuffed olives, sundried tomato and rocket salad and Simon had the pan fried breast of wood pigeon, roasted baby beetroot, activated walnuts and baby watercress. Both were good (charcuterie is always good), but the wood pigeon was the more interesting choice. The meat was served cold and melted in your mouth, surprisingly similar to a pork tenderloin.

The mains came next and Cat chose a pan-seared breast of wild mallard duck, celeriac rosti, sautéed kale, spiced cranberry and Clementine sauce and Simon the canon of venison, brussel sprouts with bacon, boulangere Jerusalem artichokes in a red wine jus. We were both initially a bit disappointed that the steak was sold out, but this made us a little more adventurous with our choices. The duck was beautiful, served rare. The venison as you would expect had a strong gamey taste, but worked well with the brussels and bacon.

Dessert was a very difficult decision as all the choices sounded amazing. After much consideration and help from the waiter, we ordered the sticky toffee pudding, toffee sauce and salted caramel ice cream and the spiced pear and pecan crumble with almond milk crème anglaise. By this point, we were both stuffed (Cat more so than Simon) and we both could hardly finish. The crumble with the non-dairy custard was great. The sticky toffee pudding was nicely balanced by the salted caramel ice-cream, but as we rarely eat sweet stuff anymore, it was a little bit on the sweet side.

All in all, we had a lovely evening and it was nice to be able to order from a menu without making any modifications. We have already recommended the restaurant to our friends, who will be going very soon.

Viewings and Chow

While I've been happily immersing myself in functional movement in a gym, my parents have been slaving away at home, preparing to sell the house. Things suddenly got a bit hectic, now that we've found a fantastic place out in the sticks and now need to sell this house. It's been go, go, go for a few weeks now, whipping the house and garden into shape for photos and tomorrow's viewings.

It's good to be home though, eating food off proper plates and not from glass jars. Despite a rather full on cleaning day, we managed to eat pretty darn well. And tomorrow, while potential buyers are viewing the house, we'll be treating ourselves to brunch in a restaurant. :-)

Omelette with home cured bacon, lingonberries and salad. Fermented beetroot juice, don't ask...

Home pickled herring in paleo mayo, with salad and cold sweet potatoes.

Salmon fillets wrapped in smoked salmon, salad (we like kraut, yeah), paleo mayo sauce and some cold rice.

Keep your fingers crossed for us tomorrow!

Simple(ton) Sauce

Eating clean when on the move can be a challenge. I stayed with some family friends in Lidingö while in Stockholm and although I had full access to their kitchen, I didn't exactly have oodles of time to cook.

Inspired by one of my classmates, I threw together this meat sauce late one evening. It took me perhaps half an hour from start to finish and did the trick. Plus it has very few ingredients, my general credo in the kitchen.

500 g mince meat (organic mooooh, please)
500 ml tinned tomatoes
1 large onion
At least a teaspoon each of powdered ginger, cumin, dried thyme (or whatever strikes your fancy in the cupboard. Go on, go crazy.)
Salt and pepper to taste
Ghee or butter for frying
A dollop of butter to thicken the sauce before serving

Chop and fry the onions on medium heat in a frying pan for a few minutes until soft. Watch them like a hawk, don't let them burn.

Add the meat. Mash up. Season. Fry for a few minutes until no pinkness remains. Dunk in the tomatoes. Mix well, then put on a lid and let it simmer for 10-15 minutes while you make a salad, pick the lint out of your belly button or check Facebook.

Add the butter. If you're feeling frisky, go all the way and plonk in 3-4 tablespoons. Stir and watch the magical transformation of an otherwise average sauce.

Eat it while it's hot. Then put the rest in a glass jar and eat cold the next day at work. Because microwaves are evil. 

Excellent choice of paper bags to bring food in to low carb class (matavfall=food waste; Karamellkungen=CandyKing)

Monday Fish

Sometimes I don't plan ahead and I need to make dinner from whatever random things are left in the fridge and freezer. Today was such a day and the result was pretty amazing! This is what I used:

350g frozen pollock, cut into cubes (no need to defrost, but it is easier to cut if it has been out for 30 minutes)
1/2 onion
1 sweet potato
1/2 kohlrabi
2 garlic cloves
3 chunks frozen chopped spinach
2 tbsp tomato purée
100g creamed coconut, dissolved in hot water
1 lime
Dried thyme
Dried oregano
Salt
Cayenne pepper

Fry chopped onion in fat of choice (I used coconut oil), then add thyme, oregano, pepper and chopped garlic. Then throw in diced sweet potato and kohlrabi, stir once in a while. Pour in creamed coconut, lime juice, tomato purée and spinach after a few minutes. Stir and cover with a lid. When the vegetables are almost done, place the cubed fish on top, replace the lid and let cook for a few minutes until fish is done. Stir and serve. Easy!

Cheek to Cheek

We finally made it to Lindegrens yesterday and stocked up on proper meat to last us for a few weeks. Among the slightly more weird and wonderful cuts was pig's cheek. Given Lindegrens organic/ grass-fed profile, the meat is pretty expensive, but this cut was on the affordable side. Happy days!

As per David Lindegren's suggestion, I went for a slow-cooked, rolled up cheek. I spread an herb/lemon/sundried tomato concoction evenly on both and rolled them up as tightly as I could.

The cheeks looked like this after 3 hours at 100 degrees, followed by 45 minutes of 175 to brown them.

They tasted great, but were a bit on the fatty side, meaning that one unlucky person got a huge amount of fat and not too much meat. I figure I'll try some ox cheek next time around to avoid the fat overload, especially since pork fat tends to have an unfavourable omega 3 & 6 balance.

Tweak Week

The first day of anti-osteoarthritis week (or month or year, we'll see) went well.

I started off my day with an 8 am run, workout and walk. I haven't really done much training since I left Höö, so I figured it was time to get going again. Yikes. Five rounds of box jumps (thank you officer M), pull-up negatives, overhead squats (log included) and sit-ups left me pretty tired but satisfied.

This is where the fun began. Because after this, we all went straight to the garden to start a two hour session of digging. Let's just say things went pretty slowly, given that the sun was cranking up the heat by 9 and we were starting to get hungry... There was some whining (no names divulged, but it wasn't me) before we finally sat down for brunch at 11:30. Given that I've pledged to give up non-organic meat (no bacon for a while... oh the hardship), I went for a slightly odd breakfast option of salad, eggs and herring. Oh, and mamma's green smoothie made of weeds. :-)

Swedish Midsummer come early

Instead of the usual breakfast chaser of "egg latte" and nut & seed crackers with butter, I had two cups of egg latte with some additional coconut oil to set me up for more garden work.

Heaven in a mug

After the initial slo mo moments this morning, the rest of the day in the garden felt like any other day, i.e. pretty energetic. The bikini weather may contributed to it...

By the time 5 pm rolled around, we were all starting to feel a bit peckish, so we cobbled together some dinner. Given my self-imposed meat restriction, I had to dig through the pantry to find some more fish, this time tuna.

Tuna salad, crudités and Jerusalem artichokes (with a LOT of ghee and coconut oil added) 

Dinner was finished by 6 pm and given that we've got a few things to do before brunch tomorrow, we're probably looking at an 18 hour fast. I've said it before, more extreme fasting is probably not that great for women, so I will definitely not want to make that too much of a habit. Also, the point of  this particular exercise is not to lose weight (or get cranky), so I will want to limit it to 16 hours on most days.

Progress report to follow!

An Average Thursday Menu II

The great thing about paleo is how easy cooking has become. With some simple prep, good quality ingredients and plenty of good fats, it is difficult to make a mess of it. This is what we ate yesterday.

Breakfast: Spiced banana scrambled eggs with bacon and blueberry "sprinkles", served with egg latte.   Lovely, as usual, but Cat and I both got a bit hungry by 11, so had another "latte".

Lunch: The usual lunch at Casa Paulsson is leftovers. This time it was ox heart stew with a bit of extra stock added. I chopped up a bit of cauliflower, tomato and avocado to "line" the plates and then added the stew. Served with a dainty side of avocado/green banana/spinach/coconut cream smoothie. Cat and I were quite active yesterday, because we had to have a snack of pâté and salad a few hours later.

Dinner: Fish curry with cauliflower "rice" and sauerkraut salad. The curry made mamma break into a sweaty rant about who put too much spice into it, ha ha. If she wants me to cook, she better get used to it.