Cooking Therapy

Over the last three weeks my school, work and health converged into a giant swell of busy and left me unable to cook. Add in a few holidays and I literally hadn’t done my weekly cook-up in a very long time. (Picture lots of Chipolte, Five Guys, Elevation Burger, sushi, hot dogs and green smoothies.)

I had Saturday all to myself. It was fabulous.  I started the morning at CrossFit Aspire – this is my first week post-cankle boot. It’s been great getting back into the swing of things at the gym, but I am way out of shape. Yikes. I was sucking wind . Six weeks with no cardio leaves you pretty bad off.

After Aspire I headed to Whole Foods where I stocked up on all the good stuff. My cart looked so pretty I had to take a picture. (Yes, I am the crazy person at WF snapping shots of her cart.)



How cute are those tiny spaghetti squash?



Cooking is relaxing for me. Cathartic even. There’s something very fulfilling about preparing delicious and satisfying food for you and your loved ones. The more I cook, the better I feel. So let’s just say I was VERY relaxed by the time I was done. 

Here’s the damage:

·         3 pounds meatballs (recipe coming soon)

·         Roasted spaghetti squash

·         Grilled chicken drumsticks

·         Sausage-stuffed peppers

·         Creamy Spice Market Kale (Well Fed)

·         Chorizo and Kale Breakfast Casserole

·         Jimaca Home Fries (Well Fed)

And I feel so good knowing that I have the whole week of food taken care of. No mornings without a breakfast to grab. No wondering where I have to run out and get lunch.

Café Pantz will be serving it up all week. Hallelujah.

Miss Me?

Chicken Fingers

So it’s been a while. Miss me? Probably not, ha ha. It was spring break and I unintentionally unplugged from the blogosphere. And by blogosphere I mean kitchen. Which means I ate a lot of takeout. (Feel free to translate this whole intro into the fact that I ate a lot of tortilla chips.)

So now that’s out there, let’s talk about one recent culinary adventure I took. (They’ve been scarce over the last few weeks.) How do you feel about chicken fingers? I feel amazing about them. And I just had a bunch. They were good. The end. Not really.

The longer version of the story is that making chicken fingers is easy. Keep reading and I’ll tell you how. The first step is keeping a simple spice mix on hand. Stupid simple. Here it is…

Spice Mix

·         2 T salt

·         1 T pepper

·         1 tsp paprika

·         1 tsp garlic powder



Not chicken fingers. Still good.



There is almost nothing that couldn’t be made better by a few sprinkles of this stuff. (Exclusions include ice cream and mangoes.) I make big batches and keep in a used empty spice shaker. 

OK, so take this lovely spice mix and do the following….

Chicken Fingers

·         1-2 pounds chicken breast

·         ½ cup almond flour (i.e. ground up almonds)

·         ½ cup dried minced onion

·         1-2 T spice mix

Mix together almond flour, minced onion and spice mix. Cut the chicken breast into strips (4-6 strips per breast) and dredge the pieces in the mixture. Throw onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Eat. Now it’s really the end.

Breakfast is My Jam



Breakfast is my jam. Eggs are my friend. Sausage is my cuddle buddy. And bacon…I don’t even know if we can go there (even on the internet).

Part of what makes my morning meal so awesome today is that pre-paleo my breakfasts were pretty lackluster. Instant oatmeal, a fiber bar, maybe some egg whites topped with low-fat cheese…that is some sad food.

On my first 30 day paleo challenge (30 days of eating 100% paleo), I started eating eggs for breakfast. In the beginning, I had a hard time eating egg yolks. Not because I didn’t like them (they are golden heaven), but because I had been taught they were “bad.” Oh, how wrong I was…

Early on, in what I’ll call my “egg phase,” I ate a lot of hard boiled or fried eggs with meat on the side. But something was missing. I was veggie-less.

I started searching for ways to eat my veggies in the morning too (two cups of veggies at every meal!).  One of the best breakfast combinations I’ve done recently is grilled chicken legs with a green smoothie (recipe coming soon).

This week I improvised a breakfast casserole that has all sorts of good stuff in it, including greens. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s tasty!

Chorizo and Kale Breakfast Casserole

·         2 pounds fresh chorizo (I use Whole Foods)

·         1 large onion, chopped

·         I bunch kale, stemmed and torn into chunks

·         16 eggs

·         ¼ cup Frank’s Red Hot

·         1 T garlic powder

·         Dash of pepper

Pre-heat oven to 350. Dice onion and crumble chorizo in a large skillet. Cook on medium high until the sausage is cooked through. Once it’s cooked, turn to low and fold in the kale. The kale will wilt into the sausage and make awesomeness. Take the mixture and spread it into the bottom of an 11x17 pan.

Separately, beat the eggs and fold in the Frank’s and the garlic powder. For less spice, use less Franks (duh).  Once it’s blended, pour it over the meat mixture. Take that yumminess and put it in the oven for 30-40 mins. Cook until it’s firm in the middle.

This makes enough to serve for breakfast (for two!) all week. And you can say you got some veggies for breakfast. It’s a win win.

How to Organize Your Freezer for $2 (or Meat Jenga)

Dollar Store Baskets

Because I buy beef from a cow share, the freezer gets pretty full pretty fast. In my early days of bulk buying, I stacked the cuts of meat on top of each other on the freezer shelves. When I wanted to get a piece out it was a balancing act – a little game of meat Jenga. When you pull out the wrong piece you get a meat avalanche. (Note: When a 5 lb brisket lands on your bare foot, it hurts.)

In addition to dangers of creating a meat avalanche, my set-up wasn’t using the freezer space efficiently. And when you have 40+ pounds of meat in your freezer, every inch counts. When I was organizing my closet, I bought some small, cheap plastic baskets to throw my socks, belts and scarves in. I grabbed up an extra and stuck it in the freezer. Viola! It worked like a charm. Now my meat is all stacked up nice and neat. And my feet are safe.  

Seriously though you should try this. Because let’s face it, no one wins at meat Jenga. Not even the meat.  

Simple and Kickass

Whenever my husband sees “S&K” jotted on our weekly cook-up list, he is a very happy man. That’s because it stands for Sausage and Kale. This dish was created by Steve of The Paleo Drummer and is slap-your-momma good. It also takes almost no effort to make. In short, it’s perfection.

The first time I had S&K was at a paleo potluck. I remember taking a few bites and then immediately walking up to Steve, interrupting his conversation, and begging him to tell me how this magical creation was concocted. When he said “it’s so easy” I almost kissed him, which would have been weird. He might have taken his K&S home.  

Off to the store…

PS The Paleo Drummer is an awesome blog and resource. Steve knows his stuff and is an amazing source of information on the science and other geeky about paleo. He is awesome-sauce.