Happy Monday, fair readers! It’s a picture perfect day here in Chicago…..sunny with a slight breeze, and temperatures expected to be in the low 80s. Simply lovely June weather, indeed. Far better than the 50 and pouring rain with storms we had on June 1st. I’ll take it!

If it’s the beginning of the week, it must be time to be thinking about our meal plan! Our last weekly meal plan that was posted had some new recipes (some worked out beautifully, some will need some tweaking if they are to be made again) and we may try some new stuff out this week too.  Also, get ready, because grilling season is officially here and we are rocking it out! It is perfect weather for outdoor cooking and not heating up the kitchen.  

Someone asked me why I don’t post our breakfast and lunch meal plans as well, and the answer is actually pretty simply — it’s almost always the same stuff.  I’m not a huge breakfast person, but hubby is. He has a protein smoothie with some variation of fruit included pretty much every morning, since we will see an apocalypse before he will eat an egg.  I enjoy either eggs with a bit of bacon or sausage, or a smoothie as well. Depending on what fruit we have on hand, the flavor changes daily (preview of tomorrow’s exciting post? smoothie making and how to freeze your own fruit to save money).

For lunch, I’m also a person of routine. I can easily eat the same thing almost every day for lunch and not get bored with it. If I’m not eating leftovers from the previous evening’s dinner, you’ll find me having a simple lunch of deli turkey breast, a tomato, pickle, and 2 cheese sticks. It’s filling, packed with protein and fills me up until dinner time.  Patrick will often have some variation on this lunch as well, or be eating leftovers.

Over the years, I’ve learned a few things about my cooking, the most simple of which is this — cooking for two is easier than cooking for one; cooking for four is easier than cooking for two. Most recipes have a standard “makes four” serving size. In lieu of fiddling with halving recipes and possibly messing with flavors on meals that include spices and zip, I just make the four person recipe. That way, we have leftovers for lunch that are going to be delicious and filling, and which take a lot less prep work than anything else. Perfect for tossing in a lunch bag as you’re heading out the door to work. I know there are some people who don’t like leftovers, and I gotta tell ya, those people are missing out! Some meals are even better as leftovers — tacos for one. After the taco meat has had all the seasonings seep in overnight, it is fabulous the second and third days. Leftovers also work well for us on evenings when one of us isn’t home due to social commitments, work, etc. If Patrick isn’t going to be home for dinner, I may just heat up leftovers to clear out the fridge instead of making a big production of dinner, and vice versa. So, if you’re a reader that doesn’t like leftovers, I urge you to give them a try again. You’re eating your own food that you’ve already prepped (so you know how well it was made) and you’re going to be able to experience the food in new ways.

Without further ado, I give you our dinner plan for the week:

Sunday:

Grilled pork chops with grilled garlic green beans and sweet corn

Monday:

Steak fajitas — I made my own fajita seasoning, using this recipe as the base. In lieu of cornstarch, I use arrowroot, and I cut out the sugar. I’ve not noticed any lack of flavor without having the sugar in it. I like to let the steak marinate in the fajita seasoning all day in the fridge, and then do a quick “make your own fajita bar” with the peppers, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, etc.

Tuesday:

Bruschetta Chicken from The Pioneer Woman — If you’re not reading The Pioneer Woman’s blog yet, do yourself a favor and head over there right now and bookmark it! She’s got some really great recipes, funny stories, giveaways, etc. Her bruschetta chicken is unknowingly Paleo friendly and DELICIOUS!!!

Wednesday:

Grilled sausage with grilled broccoli — I’m going to do a blog post later this week about grilling veggies, so get your grilling baskets ready! If you don’t have one, hit up Marshalls or HomeGoods and grab one cheap. It’ll be one of the best things you buy this summer!

Thursday:

Stuffed peppers and Broccoli Sunflower Seed Slaw with Poppy Dressing

Friday:

Leftovers! Or maybe eating out! It’ll be a surprise to us and you!

Saturday:

Sadly, Patrick and I have separate social engagements this evening and we will be eating out separately…..both are events tailored to our individual interests, though, so we will each have fun. I’m going to the theater with close friends and Patrick is watching a huge boxing match with his buddies!

What is on your meal plan for this week? Anything new and fun?

This year was a year of a lot of new things we are trying in the garden.  First up, and the biggest change of all, is that Patrick and I have moved our garden plot to a new area of our yard. In years past, I’ve always put our garden in the western plot in the yard that backs up to the garage. We would get pretty decent sun, and it was a decently sized area (approximately 2.5 feet deep, and 18 feet wide). You can see lots of pictures from last year’s garden here.  This past winter, however, our landlord and his girlfriend ripped out a HUGE evergreen bush that was on the southern side of the yard. Not only did this open up a huge new area for gardening, but the sun exposure is amazing, as it does not have a garage or our building blocking it.

After several discussions with Jan about how we wanted the garden to look this year, our crop goals and the available space, we decided to get down to work.  Jan, who is a landscaping afficianado and has done some beautiful work with perennials in our yard and in her yard, was kind enough to buy us a cedar, raised garden box from Home Depot. It looks great, it smells great, and it is also part of a component system, so anytime we want to expand with additional pieces it’s a breeze to do so. Since we hadn’t planted in this area of the yard before, though, there was a lot of soil preparation to do. I was very lucky that hubby agreed to help out with tilling the soil so that I didn’t end up in painful back spasms, screaming on the ground with tears streaming down my face.

Once we prepped the soil, we figured out what plants we wanted to do this year, taking into considerations our successes and failures from last year.  In our raised bed, we have 16 individual square foot plots to fill (4×4 raised bed), and there is a lot of space around where we placed the raised bed to plant directly into the ground.  We’ve also learned a few things from last year–namely, that zucchini and cucumbers both need a LOT more room than we read that they did. Our zucchini plant alone spread out over about 8 feet….it was great because we got so much zucchini, and it was annoying because we weren’t expecting it to get that big. Lesson learned. This year, we decided to plant the following items:

• Zucchini squash
• Cucumber
• Red bell pepper
• Green bell pepper
• Orange bell pepper
• Yellow bell pepper
• Mammoth fajita bell pepper
• Yellow straight neck squash
• Boston Bibb lettuce
• 4 plots of bush beans
• 4 plots of sugar snap peas
• Sweet mint
• Orange mint
• Jalapenos

That was the haul of plants that we got from Home Depot and got into the raised bed, and in the case of the zucchini, the 8 foot plot area to the left of the raised bed so it has room to grow.

Now, before you freak out my darling readers, have no fear, we ARE PLANTING TOMATOES! After much consultation with tomato growing experts, lots of off season reading and lots of review of what has worked and not worked in the past, we made a big tomato decision.  This year, wait for it, we decided that we were going to skip tomatoes at Home Depot, where we’ve gotten pretty much crap the past few years, and they didn’t grow well, and would spend a little bit more money to get nursery level tomatoes. [Note: A few years ago in the Chicago area, tomato plants across the state were hit with some sort of disease that took out all of our plants.  Last year, we had 3 gorgeous tomato plants going in our stand-alone, upside down container, only to have a bad storm knock over a planter with 150 pounds of dirt in it--needless to say, our tomatoes that were growing along so beautifully were battered and broken. All we were able to salvage was half a cherry tomato plant.] This year, we were all set to head off to Gesthemane Garden Center, our local awesome nursery on Clark Street, when the Peterson Garden Project announced they were having their plant sale fundraiser and would have TONS of heirloom tomatoes. We got up early the morning of the sale and headed out!

Success was ours at the Peterson Garden Project sale!!! We got 5 heirloom tomato varieties, 2 cherry tomatoes, 1 tomatillo and a mammoth basil plant. All for $31! And the best part, of course, is that all the funds go to support the PGP, which is a local organization that creates urban gardens in abandoned areas, unused lots, etc.  You can read up on the Peterson Garden Project, how to help and how to volunteer here.  Even our Mayor and his family have their own garden plot! It really is a wonderful organization to get people in the city involved with gardening, especially when they don’t have space at their homes to do it.

We headed home and got started with our planting, making sure to give each plant the required amount of “square foot” space, as recommended by Mel, the square foot gardening guru.  His book is great, and he really shows that you can grow a lot in a small space — check it out!  After several hours of work on Mother’s Day weekend, this was what our garden looked like!

The raised bed, zucchini and the tomatoes all spaced out in the area in front of the bed.

Tiny tomato plants that I hope are going to blow up and take over that entire space with their heirloom gloriousness!

Our mammoth basil and orange mint (smells and tastes delicious).

The sweet mint and our jalapeno.

I faithfully watered our garden and kept an eye on the plants, and added in the necessary tomato cages in the week after the garden went in. Let’s face it, after spending almost the entire weekend gardening, even I needed a break from going to Home Depot! Subsequent trips to the Depot included purchases of tomato cages and several stepping stones to create a walkway through the fenced garden area so I can prune and weed without ending up ankle deep in mud.

After less than two weeks, this is how fast stuff started growing:

And then, about 2 weeks ago, it happened. This goddamn, morbidly obese bunny that has been feeding on gardens on our block for the past year ate the entire zucchini plant. He then tried to go after my tomatoes. Well, game on, bunny, game on. Patrick and I researched how to get rid of the bunny and found advice that ranged from hunting the rabbit with a BB gun in the middle of the night in cammo fatigues, to sprinkling coyote urine around the garden.  Yes, because I just happen to have an abundance of coyote urine on hand. Please note, after researching the urine option further, it turns out you can get it quite cheap on Amazon. Unfortunately, waiting for my urine to get shipped to me would still leave too much time for the bunny to destroy my garden. So this past Sunday, I set out with my trusty green mesh fencing that we had used to block off the large part of the yard where we seeded early this season. I cut the fencing down to size to go around each tomato cage and individually wrapped each one, tying the fencing shut and creating a 12″ tall barrier to the bunny.

Well, I got your number you little bastard bunny.  My fencing is working and I actually got to witness the look of frustration on that animal’s face when he tried to get past it, only to realize he couldn’t. Now, my tomatoes can grow without that little monster trying to eat them, and I have hope that I’ll get some awesome heirloom tomatoes this season.

It’s also now been raining pretty heavily the past two days here, which is awesome for the plants. When I went out into the yard first thing this morning, the plants looked like they had just grown by leaps and bounds overnight…the peas are even finally starting to wind around the supports so they can grow tall and plentiful.

What do your gardens look like this summer? What yummy things have you planted to enjoy???

Such was the case with a book that I just read, er, actually devoured, over this past weekend.  Last week, my bestest girlfriend, Carolyne, and I decided to start a book club.  Or, as my husband referred to it, just us hanging out and talking about books, which is what we do anyway:) We both enjoy good mysteries, supernatural stuff and historical books, and thought it would be fun to make a pointed effort to both read the same book and have a discussion. Since the inception of this idea last week, we’ve picked up two more members for the club, so that’s a bonus.

Carolyne chose the first book, The Restorer by Amanda Stevens.

Seriously, doesn’t the cover just look intriguing? If I was wandering the shelves of my local Barnes and Noble and had come across this, I would DEFINITELY have picked it up based solely on the cover.  The Restorer is the first book in The Graveyard Queen Series featuring Amelia Gray. This is the description from the back of the book:

“My name is Amelia Gray.  I’m a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I’ve always held fast to the rules passed down from my father.  But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe.

It started with the discovery of a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I’ve been hired to restore.  The clues to the killer –and to his other victims–lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret.  Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy.  To warn him would be to invite them into my life. Ive vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the rest.”

The description on the back of this book simply does NOT do this book justice. It is a Southern Gothic ghost story that takes place in old Charleston, where pre-Civil War history is colliding with the modern world.  This is already a huge plus for me, since I really enjoy reading about Southern history, with its ghosts and Gullah spirits and witchcraft, things that we just don’t have up North in Chicago where the city was rebuilt after a major fire. There’s a charm, for me at least, to the aura of the deep south, and I’ve always wanted to visit. The world that Stevens created for Amelia and Devlin, with its shadowy history and ghosts was just too intriguing.

Stevens also created compelling characters, who you want to get to know more. The author reveals just enough about the characters’ pasts to keep you flipping the pages, madly wanting more. The interplay between Amelia Gray and John Devlin, the haunted cop, is both believable and enticing.

At times, the world that Stevens created for her characters and her story got downright creepy, which is the hallmark of a good Southern Gothic ghost story.  No joke, at one point, I was reading the book late into the night long after my husband and dog were fast asleep and it was at a particularly scary point in the book and every single sound I heard in the house was creeping me out. Now. That’s a damn good book.

Since reading this book in less than two days over the weekend, I raced to the Chicago Public Library website to put the second and third books on hold so that I can read them. But dammit if somebody else hasn’t already checked all the copies out! I know I’ve found a good read when all I want to do after finishing one book is pick up the next in the series. If you like mysteries, ghost stories, and/or Southern Gothic novels, I highly suggest you pick this book up. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed!

So what’s a girl to do when weeknight dinner beckons and you don’t want to be bogged down in prep time? Why, grill peppers, onions, tomatoes and sausage! Here’s a super easy, super fast, and super yummy dinner that you can make in, literally, 10 minutes of grilling time!

Ingredients (serves 2):

2 Green Bell Peppers, cut into bite size pieces

2 Red Bell Peppers, cut into bite size pieces

1 Onion, cut in half and sliced (think half onion ring size)

1 Pint Grape tomatoes, halved (or cherry, whatever floats your boat)

1 Packet Mojito Lime seasoning

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

Turkey Sausage (or any other sausage of your choosing)

The before cooking pictures:

(Note: I used Ekrich Skinless Turkey Sausage)

Instructions:

1. Get your grill going nice and hot. You’re going to need a veggie grilling basket for this meal, and I always toss mine on the grill while it’s warming up so that the basket is piping hot and ready too.

2. In a large bowl, toss the peppers, onion, tomato, Mojito Lime seasoning and olive oil, to ensure that everything is coated up.

3.  When your grill is ready (I usually let mine heat up for about 10 minutes), toss the pepper mixture into the grilling basket, and toss the sausages on the grill.

For the sausages, assuming they are pre-cooked, which most are, you can grill them over medium heat, 5 minutes per side. Key –> Be sure to poke a few holes in each sausage with a fork so that the juices can escape and you don’t have the sausage explode on you while cooking. For the veggies, I let them cook away in the basket over medium-high heat, and mix them around with tongs at the halfway mark of cooking (5 minutes) to ensure that they are evenly cooked.

4.  Once the cooking time is done, turn your grill off and enjoy your fabulous dinner.

Behold, the beauty of grilled veggies, piping hot:

And sausages, perfectly grilled as well:

What’s your favorite meal to toss on the grill in summer?

One of my favorite features for her blog is her weekly roundup of what she’s planning for meals for the week. I look to her for inspiration, and maybe just copied half her meal plan this week since I was being lazy. Let’s face it — while we all have our tried and true dinners that we make week after week, because we love them and are familiar with them and can whip them up quickly, we all need to see new stuff in the mix. Also, and maybe it’s just me, but when I meal plan for my week, I eat better all around since I know, without question, here is what I’m having on Tuesday night and I don’t get to 5pm on Tuesday night and go “Oh holy fuck, I don’t have anything defrosted or that I want to eat.”  I also have a husband who literally made a face at me the last time I made Pioneer Woman’s Mustard Chicken (which I love, but yes, I may have started to put it too heavily into the rotation). New stuff was needed, and fast.

So, in a total homage to Holly, I figure I’d share what my meal plan for this week is!

Sunday:

Paleo Pad Thai

I came across this recipe on one of the Paleo food blogs I read and had almost everything on hand to make it. My husband is a HUGE fan of Thai food and I always enjoy trying my hand at new things. I had to substitute an onion for a shallot and peanuts for macadamia nuts, but the result was DELISH. And it definitely made more than just 2 servings of food, so I have leftovers to enjoy for my lunch:) Go me!

Monday:

Meatballs and a Kickass Salad — This is actually for my husband and his friend Jon who is coming over tonight, as I will be having Ladies Dancing With the Stars dinner celebration! The meatballs are simmering away in the Crockpot for the guys to enjoy whenever they get hungry, and the bonus is I made so much that I’ll surely have lunchtime leftovers this week. Huzzah!

Tuesday:

Grilled Bell Peppers and Onion and Turkey Sausage — Now that it’s warm it’s getting to be grilling season, so I plan on making this one a lot. It’s also something Patrick can eat without getting sick of it. It’s spectacularly easy, sinfully delicious and will be the subject of its own post really soon. I promise:)

Wednesday:

Grilled Tuscan Chicken with Lemon and Rosemary (totally stole this recipe from Holly’s blog this week, but it looks too goddamn good not to eat) & Grilled Lemon-Garlic Broccoli

Thursday:

Paleolasagna — I don’t know what to say about this meal except that just looking at the picture is making me unbelievably hungry and excited for this dinner. Check it out, I don’t think you’ll regret it!

Friday:

Taco Salad Bar Night!

Saturday:

Leftovers or maybe eating out or maybe a quick stir-fry or maybe Patrick will be cooking. We are hosting a big barbeque on Sunday for our dear friends who are moving away and I know there will be tons of cooking and food prep for that, and I know I won’t want to cook a big Saturday meal.

I’m planning on making this a weekly feature, and would LOVE to hear what you all are making this week….new recipes and ideas are always fun and always welcome!

I’ve been toying with the idea of what recipe/meal to post next and share with you all….should it be a new creation? An old standby? Comfort food transformed into moderately healthy comfort food? And then I realized, it should be the Breadless Cheesesteak Sandwiches with Peppers! Why? Because it is DELICIOUS! And FAST! And EASY! And YUMMY! It’s the perfect weeknight meal for when you have to cook but don’t really want to, great to make before an evening out on the weekend and is even a quick lunch if you work from home or have the day off. Behold, I give you this wonder of taste:

Serving Size: 2

Ingredients:

2 Green Bell Peppers, sliced into pieces of your preferred size

2 Red Bell Peppers, sliced into pieces of your preferred size

1 Purple Onion, small, cut into thin slices

2 Tablespoons EVOO or butter (your choice, I personally use butter)

1 LB Deli roast beef (I used the Sara Lee Medium Roast Beef, low sodium)

Provolone Cheese, approximately 6 slices

Instructions:

1.  In a large sautee pan, melt your EVOO or butter (or other fat of your choosing) over medium-high. When the pan is nice and hot, add the onions and sautee them until they are starting to get tender, approximately 2-3 minutes.

2.  Add in the peppers and sautee until they are cooked through, but still a bit crunchy. I always find that cooking peppers is a matter of personal preference.  I want mine cooked through but still crunchy.  I made this meal for my parents on Friday and my mom prefers her peppers cooked a little bit more. It’s all just what YOU like.

3.  Once the peppers and onions are fully cooked, remove them from the pan and set them aside in a platter.

4.  Returning your pan to the heat, add your roast beef to the pan and cook it over medium heat for approximately 2-3 minutes.  Basically, you just want to warm the roast beef up and get it to brown a little bit. It’s already been fully cooked before being sold to you, so this is truly just to warm it up and let it soak up the peppery and onion flavor of the pan.  And believe me, you’ll be pleased that you did!

5.  Once the roast beef has been cooked to your satisfaction, scoot it to one side of the pan and add the peppers back in to warm them up.  I try to arrange my pan so that the peppers are the bottom layer, and the roast beef is then on top of them.  But there’s no right and wrong in this recipe, so if you want to mix it all up, go for it!

6.  Add the slices of provolone cheese to cover the peppers and beef in the pan and cover until the cheese is melted, approximately 1-2 minutes, depending on your stove.

7.  Eat and enjoy your delicious dinner without the bad carbiness of bread and gluten! You get so many vitamins from the veggies that this is truly a complete meal on its own. Or, you can add in a salad on the side if you’d like.

Personally, I’ve never been the biggest fan of Alfredo Sauce, as I find the jarred stuff too tart and chemical tasting and when we eat out I am drawn to pesto, which is my favorite. This meal was super quick and easy to make, and the jarred sauce DID deepen and became richer in flavor after cooking with the chicken and squash in it. After making it, though, I was still convinced I could make a version with a homemade sauce that I would like even more.  Challenge accepted!

Before this evening, I’d never made my own Alfredo Sauce, so I googled it and came across many recipes from which to choose — Alton Brown, Paula Deen, Giada, fake Olive Garden sauce. You name it, it was out there…..I didn’t like all of the ingredients in some of those sauces and found a pretty simple recipe to use as my base, here.

If you’ve made any type of a sauce in your kitchen before, you know that it usually requires that you use flour combined with butter to create the roux, or the base of the sauce. I have no problem with roux, and have made many in my day. The issue now is that we are eating Paleo and have cut out white flour from our diets…..is there a solution? Or am I totally screwed on this one? Nope, all is well.  Many people are unaware that there are a bazillion and one options for using flour that does not contain gluten and that is made from a variety of other bases…..coconut flour and almond flour are two of my favorites.  I’ve used them in baking many things since going Paleo and gluten-free and things taste even better.  This evening, I had to fiddle with the amount of coconut flour to use (and ultimately increased the amount called for in the recipe) in order to get the consistency in the roux that I needed.   Without further ado, I give you Fatty Girl’s recipe for Paleo friendly, gluten free Chicken Alfredo with Zucchini and Yellow Squash!

Ingredients for the chicken and veggie part:

• 4-5 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2-3 Zucchini (I tried to get bigger, so I had longer noodles and more of them)
• 2-3 Yellow Squash (Again, try to get bigger, so that you have longer noodles)
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• Italian Seasoning
• Kosher salt
• Ground black pepper

Instructions:

1.  Ready? Set? Go prepare your chicken! I sliced the chicken breasts into strips (think fajita size) and then cut the bigger pieces in half so that they were all the same size for even and quick cooking.  Sprinkle kosher salt, ground black pepper and italian seasoning onto the chicken (both sides) and you can set aside in the fridge for a little bit if you’re doing advance prep. Personally, I prepped my chicken about 5 hours before I started making dinner and just put the plate with saran wrap in the fridge. Or, you can cook right away.

2.  Next step? Prepare your zucchini and yellow squash! This is super easy and until this woman’s recipe I hadn’t thought to make faux pasta using zucchini.  Armed with the veggie peeler, and a cutting board, I got down to work. Just start peeling and don’t stop until you hit seeds on all sides of the zucchini.  Repeat with the yellow squash.  This will leave you with a gorgeous pile of vibrant, thin “noodles” and the smell of fresh veggies is intoxicating. (Note: after you’re done peeling the veggies for this recipe, you still have a lot of both squash left. I chopped mine up and put into the fridge for use in stir fry or scrambled eggs — last weekend’s yellow squash and zucchini scrambled eggs were DELISH!)

3.  Grab the pan of your choosing….you could use a cast iron skillet, a regular skillet, or your dutch oven. I made this in our Le Cruset dutch oven because I knew it would have to stay warm until hubby arrived home late. Over medium-high heat, melt the butter (2 Tablespoons) and cook the chicken. Mine cooked up in about 4 minutes on each side. So as not to crowd the pan, I cooked the chicken in two batches.

4.  Once the chicken is fully cooked, remove it from the pan and set aside on a plate. Grab all your noodles and toss them into the dutch oven and cook them over medium heat. You want them to get tender and brown a little bit, but you don’t want them to burn or fall apart. Once the noodles are cooked, turn off the heat to the pan, toss the chicken back into the pot and mix it into the noodles. Oooh, and best part, don’t forget to add the chicken juices from the plate. They will taste really good.

Next up? The sauce. The sauce was very quick and easy to whip up, but because a roux based sauce with cheese requires some babysitting on the stove, I made it after I had finished the chicken and veggies so I didn’t have to babysit multiple pots and grow about 8 arms to make it all happen.

Sauce Ingredients:

• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 5 cloves garlic, finely minced
• 3 teaspoons coconut flour (we use Red Mill brand)
• 3/4 cup whole milk
• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups Parmesan cheese
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions:

1.  In your favorite saucepan (I used my purple Le Cruset sauce pan with the lid — one of the best gifts I’ve ever received for its versatility), melt the butter over medium high heat.  Add the minced garlic and sautee it quickly until the garlic is a very light brown.

2.  Immediately add the 3 teaspoons coconut flour and whisk it into the butter and garlic mixture, until you don’t have any clumps and you’ve created a slightly thick sauce.  A roux should be thicker than regular liquid, without clumps, and requires constant whisking.

3.  Pour in the heavy cream and whole milk and whisk it until combined with the roux and thickened a bit.

4.  Add in the Parmesan cheese and stir until it is fully melted.

5.  Now comes the really fun part — taste testing. Grab your spoon and taste the sauce so you can add salt and pepper to your individual palette.  I found I just needed about two pinches of salt and a little pepper and the sauce was divine. This is a picture of the sauce that I made, before adding it to the chicken and veggies:

Note: this sauce is not a shocking white like most alfredo sauces you see, due to the fact that I used coconut flour. If you make your sauce with almond flour, or white flour, chances are it will be lighter in color. But what it lacks in traditional color, I can tell you this sauce makes up for in richness and depth.

6.  Pour the sauce into the pot with the chicken and veggies and warm it over medium heat and serve.  Or, cover the pot up and wait to serve it later! Whatever floats your boat. This recipe also made great leftovers and didn’t make it past the following lunchtime in our fridge.

The final product:

How does this relate to the title of this post? Well, one afternoon I was using my alotted 30 minutes of Pinterest time (gotta limit it, or it’ll be a baaaaad time suck) and I saw a picture for a chicken dish that was smothered in mushrooms, bacon and cheesy deliciousness.  ”I love all those things,” I immediately thought. I immediately clicked on the pin, got to the link to the underlying page and read the recipe. You can find the original recipe here –> Original Alice Springs Chicken Dish.  The recipe looked awesome, I mean, look at this picture and tell me that you don’t want to immediately dive face first into this deliciousness:

Interestingly, I’ve never actually had this meal at an Outback. I think I’ve only eaten at an Outback once or twice (they were never prominent where I grew up or lived, except while in college) but the meal still looked awesome.  The biggest problem that I had with the recipe, though, was the inclusion of massive amounts of honey, which has WAY TOO MUCH sugar for what I prefer to use and cook with, especially since we’ve been eating Paleo. But alas, I remembered that Agave Nectar can be a good substitute for honey in small doses. I looked up the substitution rates (thanks Google, what would I ever do without you?) and figured that I could make the recipe work and that the calorie count would just put it into the category of a “slightly special dinner treat.” I set off on making the dish, following the recipe pretty much to the letter with the exception of the substitution of Agave Nectar for honey.  The dish was a hit with my husband and our friend Jeremy who came over to enjoy a Sunday night dinner cooked by someone else. I personally thought that the dish tasted good, but was physically messy, and in my opinion still needed a bit of tweaking.  I also found that the marinade was a little bit sweeter than I generally would have preferred, as I am much more of a sour lover than a sweet.

A few days ago as I was planning out our meals for the week, I thought about what we had in the fridge and I realized that apart from mushrooms I had all the makings to do the chicken recipe again.  Only this time, I decided I wanted to set out to modify the recipe a bit to make it more Paleo friendly (read: I love cheese, but you do NOT need half a cup of cheese per chicken breast) and fiddle with the marinade recipe to make it a little bit more Dijon and a little less honey.  The end result, in my opinion, was pretty awesome, and I give you a Paleo friendly Outback Alice Springs Chicken Recipe:

First up, the marinade….let’s meet our cast of characters, shall we?

Ingredients for Marinade:

1/2 Cup Dijon Mustard (I used 1/4 cup of one brand of dijon from Whole Foods, and then 1/4 cup French’s Dijon with champaign vinagrette…I didn’t have enough of the open dijon to do the recipe, but the resulting taste was great)

1/2 Cup Mayonnaise (I use Kraft Olive Oil Mayo)

1/8 Cup of Agave Nectar, or to your preferred taste

1/2 Teaspoon Lemon Juice

2 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts, rinsed and patted dry

1.  Combine the marinade ingredients in a large bowl and whisk them together until you have a creamy marinade. Of course, it is essential to dip your finger in to taste test and ensure that the marinade meets your individual specifications:)

Side note: part of why it is always so important to taste test as you are cooking is to make sure that things don’t end up too sweet.  The original substitution rate that I saw for Agave and Honey was 3/4 of Agave to each 1 part of honey.  The original recipe called for 1 cup of honey.  Last night, I was cutting the recipe in half, and I started out by putting in less than 1/8 cup of Agave nectar, and taste tested it. Since I was going for a honey mustard taste for the marinade and sauce, there was a delicate balance to be sought. After 1/8 cup of Agave nectar had been added, the marinade tasted pretty good. I added about 1 Tablespoon more and found that I had reached the level of sweetness that I wanted, and was able to cut half a cup of Agave from the recipe AND the associated calories.

2.  Once the marinade is made, grab your chicken breasts and put them in a gallon size freezer ziploc bag.  Pour about 3/4 of the marinade into the bag with the chicken, seal it up and smush it around so that the chicken is all coated in the marinade. Then, just toss the bag in the fridge and let the chicken marinate for at least 2 hours, or up to 1 day, whatever you prefer. Put the remaining marinade into a small bowl and set it aside in the fridge.  Like so:

3.  While your chicken is finishing marinating, but before you start cooking, you might want to get your remaining ingredients together and prepped.  I personally like to prep them before I start the chicken cooking so that everything goes smoothly and I can get dinner done more quickly. Or maybe I’m just too anal retentive on some things and doing it this way makes me happy. Let’s not overanalyze it.

Remaining Ingredients:

8 ounces White Mushrooms, sliced

4 strips bacon (I used Meijer low-sodium bacon, it’s awesome)

1/4 cup Colby Jack cheese, shredded

1/4 cup Super Sharp Cheddar cheese, shredded

1 Tablespoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Tablespoons butter

3.5.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  In case you missed it, this is instruction 3.5. I forgot to tell you to preheat the oven, dear reader, and didn’t feel like renumbering the entire post.  Silly Kelly!

4.  After you slice up your mushrooms, heat a pan and add the olive oil.  Get the pan nice and hot, then add the mushrooms and sautee them up until they’re cooked through and a beautiful brown color.  I start the mushrooms on high heat and then reduce the flame to medium so that the mushrooms cook thoroughly but don’t burn.

5.  While the mushrooms are cooking, you can toss your bacon into the microwave to cook it.  Once it is cooked and patted to remove grease, roughly chop the bacon into small pieces. (The original recipe used the bacon in strips, but I found that doing that and then piling mushrooms and cheese on top made it all topple over and not everybody got bacon–blasphemy!).

6.  Shred your cheese and set it aside. Or, buy shredded cheese and just measure it out. Whatever floats your boat.

7.  Once your mushrooms are done cooking and have cooled a bit, transfer them to a cutting board and chop them roughly into smaller pieces.  They don’t have to be chopped or diced to perfection, just made a little bit smaller.

See how pretty all the ingredients look just waiting to be poured on top of chicken:

8.  Time to cook the chicken.  In a cast iron skillet (or large pan of your choosing, I use my Le Crueset sauce pan since it is the perfect size) melt your butter over high heat.  Add the chicken breasts to the pan and cook 5 minutes on each size. The chicken breasts will be almost cooked through and the remainder of the cooking will be done in the oven.

9.  Transfer your chicken to a glass baking dish that you’ve sprayed with olive oil (or Pam or whatever cooking spray that you use so the chicken won’t stick to the bottom). Brush the remaining marinade onto the chicken breasts, distributing it evenly between them.

10.  Sprinkle the chopped bacon pieces onto the chicken breasts, ensuring that both get equal bacon lovin’.

11.  Pour the chopped mushroom pieces onto the chicken breasts, also ensuring that both get equal mushroom lovin’.

12.  Sprinkle the shredded cheese over both chicken breasts, you know, making sure it’s evenly divided between the two chicken breasts.

13.  Pop your dish into the oven for about 15-20 minutes. You want the chicken to finish cooking, and the cheese to have melted and gotten bubbly and maybe even a little brown (at least, I like my cheese a little bubbly and brown).

14.  Serve your deliciousness with the veggie of your choosing and voila! It tastes great, has tons less calories than the original recipe and has been made Paleo friendly by the exclusion of the honey.  We enjoyed ours with roasted broccoli.

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot since we started to seriously change our eating habits and strategies has been “how do you measure victories, scale related and not”?   Obviously, when weight loss is one of your active goals for a lifestyle change, the scale figures into your life.  Whether you weight yourself obsessively 10 times a day, or you weigh yourself once a week, or even every two weeks, the little digital number on the scale going DOWN is the biggest “in your face” indicator of success.  (I would, of course, prefer to see the number on the scale go down in 10 pound increments on a weekly basis, but let’s face it, that just ain’t realistic.)  But the scale isn’t the only way to measure your weight loss success.  This is something that I’ve been struggling with over the past few weeks as my husband is losing weight at a much more rapid pace than I am.  Now, that’s not to say I’m not doing pretty well, too, it’s just that the number on that scale isn’t going down as much for me as it is for him. And honestly it can be somewhat demoralizing.

When we first started eating paleo, it was post holidays, I knew I had been eating like absolute shit (consuming fast food, starchy foods, pastas, lots of simple carbs, cookies and alcohol).  I also knew that if I stepped on the scale right away, I would probably have a heart attack at the number and give up immediately, thinking that there was no way I could make any type of progress.  So for the first 3 weeks that we were starting to change our eating habits, I didn’t weigh myself.  I gave myself an interlude, if you will, to start making healthy choices without the pressure of that digital number staring me in the face on the scale.  I did my first “official” weigh in on February 9, 2012, and even after a few weeks of eating better, and starting to feel better, I wasn’t happy with where I was at. But it spurned me on to at least keep trying, because I knew I had made progress in the past weeks. My pants weren’t as tight. I moved with more ease. I had a bit less back pain.

Since that first weigh in, we have continued to eat paleo (yes, with some slip ups and some cheat days and even an evening at a wedding where I ate some of the cake — and oh God was it delicious!). I try to weigh myself no more than once per week, since I know my body well enough to know that there are daily fluctuations depending on everything from hormones, period weight, having a cocktail the night before, etc. With these weekly (and sometimes even biweekly) weigh ins, I’ve hit the point where I’ve lost 27 pounds.  I see that number and have a  lot of different feelings about it — elation at the fact that 27 pounds is a big fucking deal and I’m not carrying it around with me anymore.  Disappointment because I wish it was a little bit more.  A lot of fear because I know that I’ve gotten to this point before, where I’ve had success at losing weight and then fall off the bandwagon again, thinking that I can afford a cheat day, which turns into a cheat weekend, which turns into a cheat week, and all of a sudden that forward momentum is gone.  There’s also fear, too, because I see the 27 pounds as just a drop in the bucket of what I’d like to lose and where I’d like to eventually end up. It is so much, and yet it really isn’t at the same time.

And then, a few days ago, something happened that made me see beyond the 27 pounds, to see that my body really was changing in a way that was moving toward my long-term goals — I put on my jeans, jeans that I wore almost daily, after they had been washed and dried, and would be at their tightest.  And they were literally sliding down my hips.  To the point where I had concerns that my pants were going to fall off, leaving me showing off my undies to the world, or maybe just my dog since I hadn’t left the house.  I thought it was a fluke at first (because of course my first thought is that it’s a fluke and my success isn’t showing in that way) and so I tried on another pair of jeans — a pair from my “skinner days” if you can call them that.  And they fit. Pretty comfortably.  They weren’t loose, by any stretch of the imagination, but they were comfortable. And I could sit in them. And stand in them. And not be out of breath wearing them.  And so I started to pay a bit more attention to my body in the mirror and noticed that the visible changes were there — smaller love handles, definitely loss of inches around my waist and a slightly smaller butt.

When I was going to Weight Watchers, they called these the “non scale victories or NSV” and the leaders usually made a big deal of them and we all clapped and patted ourselves on the back for them.  Once, one of my NSV was literally not eating cake that had been in the break room at work for someone’s going away party — at the time, it was a big fucking deal. I wanted to devour that cake, but I didn’t.  Over the past week or so, as I started to really pay attention to how my clothes were fitting, and how I looked in the mirror before a shower (and let’s face it, standing naked in front of a mirror and actually looking at yourself can be one of the most terrifying things in the world), I realized that while I had gotten hung up on the number on the scale, some of these little “non scale victories” were passing me by and that I needed to enjoy them too.

What are your non-scale victories, if you’re trying to lose weight or change your lifestyle? What types of things do you look to for inspiration when the number you see on the scale isn’t where you would like it to be?

One of my inspirations? Other people’s blogs. I read a bunch of blogs on a daily basis, for recipes, books, knitting, etc., but there are a few that have become personal favorites. The one I like the most is Holly Would If She Could. Patrick actually got me reading this blog by sending me a link from Reddit to one of her pages where she had listed 30 Paleo friendly crockpot recipes she wanted to try. After a bit of digging and about 3 hours of reading her thoughts, I felt like I knew her. Holly writes with an honesty about her body and herself that I would love to have flow freely and is funny and sarcastic and measures in just the right amount of self-deprecation and positivity. I highly recommend you check her blog out, and her twitter feed too.  She reminds me of Jennifer Garner in the way that I feel like if she lived in Chicago (or for some reason I lived in California) and we crossed paths, we would be friends.  Her blog, like Pioneer Woman, has become one of the ones that I save to read last because I know I’ll always enjoy it. So please, check it out:)

Over the past several weeks, I’ve seen numerous recipes on the web that mixed pork chops with onions, but all called for cooking in a skillet. In my personal opinion, pork chops can be quite tough if they’re not given enough time to cook. They are also a blander cut of meat that need additional time to have flavors cook into them to get them all good and tasty. I prefer to cook pork chops in the slow cooker (assuming the grill is not available due to winter and all) and hence, after some fiddling (and use of the skillet for par-cooking) the following recipe was born!

Ingredients:

4-6 boneless pork loin chops sliced about an inch thick (I used 6 chops and they reheated as leftovers beautifully)

2 Large Sweet Yellow Onions (Halved and sliced thinly)

3 Large Garlic Cloves (minced)

Salt + Pepper, to taste

1 Tablespoon Onion Powder

1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder

The Spice House Lake Shore Drive Seasoning

1-2 Tablespoons Herbs de Provence

2 Tablespoons Fat of Your Choice (I used 1T butter and 1T olive oil)

Balsamic Vinegar

1/2 Cup Chicken Broth

Instructions:

1.  Rinse your pork chops in cool water and pat dry on paper towels.

2.  In a large skillet, heat the fat you’ve chosen to use on medium-high heat. While the skillet is heating, season your pork chops with the salt, pepper and Lake Shore Drive seasoning. Be liberal with your seasonings, the chops will taste better for it. Once the skillet is ready, add your chops and cook them 2 minutes on each side. You don’t want to cook them fully, you just want to get them started and give them a lovely brownish tinge. Remove the cooked chops and set aside on a platter.

Look at those gorgeous par-cooked chops!

3. To the still hot skillet, add 1-2 Tablespoons butter and let it melt.  Add the onions and garlic and cook thoroughly in the butter, letting them brown and start to sweat and be beautiful. Kind of like the onions in this picture.

4.   As the onions and garlic keep cooking, season them with the onion powder and garlic powder, and then add your Herbs de Provence. Stir everything in well and let the mixture continue to cook on medium heat. You don’t want your onions or garlic to get blackened, just to continue cooking down and looking gorgeous.

5.  After about 20-25 minutes of cooking, add balsamic vinegar to the cooking mixture and mix it in. You can use as much or as little balsamic as you prefer, based on your personal tastes. I used approximately 2 Tablespoons.  Stir the vinegar into the cooking onions, and they should look like this:

6.  Now, to the slow cooker! Put your slow cooker on LOW, and using tongs place your pork chops on the bottom.  Whatever you do, save the juices from the pork chop plate for later use. Then, pour all the onions and garlic from the skillet into the slow cooker on top of the chops. The onions are going to do a magnificent job of cooking down onto the chops and adding all sorts of wonderful flavors to them.

7.  Your skillet will likely have lots of little bits of pork and onion and garlic stuck to the bottom of it.  We are going to deglaze the pan to get those yummy bits into a quick sauce to also add to the slow cooker.  Put the skillet back on the stove, and over high heat, add the juices from the pork chops plate and add 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Turn that baby up to the highest heat you have and bring it to a gorgeous boil. You’ll want to use your wooden spoon to stir it and get all the bits off the bottom of the pan.

8.  Let the broth boil until it has reduced by about half.  Taste test it, of course, and if needed add a pinch of salt or pepper to your personal taste preferences.  Once the sauce has reduced by half, turn your heat off and pour over the chops and onions in the slow cooker.

9.  Cover and cook for 4-6 hours, mixing occasionally if you’re around to do so. Serve the chops with a good heaping of the onions on top, and the veggie of your choice.

As I said above, since I made 6 thin chops with this recipe we had plenty of leftovers. I stored it in the fridge in regular Tupperware and reheated in the microwave. The chops reheated deliciously and made a great lunch the following day.

Hope everyone enjoys!