One of my favorite ways to prevent food waste, save money and improve the nutritional value of my recipes is to make my own homemade vegetable stock. If you’re like me, you buy cans or cartons of veg and/or chicken stock to have on hand to make soup, stews and other recipes. I like to use both in place of water to add flavor to all sorts of thing including rice, quinoa, potatoes and other veggies and when cooking meat. But, it seems that a lot of those prepared stocks contain loads of sodium and a lot of those other unpronounceable chemicals so they’re not as wholesome as we might think. Yes, there are some nice organic varieties, but they are usually pretty spendy, so why not make it a home using our own leftovers?

It’s so simple, I can’t believe I wasn’t doing it sooner. I wish I could take credit for the simple idea, but I learned it from this post on Simple Bites.  I follow her quickie version and make a new batch of stock about once a month.

I compost a lot of my kitchen waste, but sometimes my compost pile can’t keep up with my new scraps, so I learned to keep some large freezer bags in my extra freezer. Each time I cook and have some veg scraps, I set them aside as I’m chopping and cooking, then I throw them in the freezer bag. I usually wait until I have about three full bags and then I split the scraps between two of my dutch ovens. I fill the pots with water and then bring to a boil, then simmer on the stove for about an hour or so.

After the stock cools, I strain it using coffee filters in my colander (cheesecloth also works) and then container it for the freezer (and I must reserve some for pouring over the Hounds’ food, also).

This is Daisy, my best sous chef

Since I use different quantities of stock for various recipes, I freeze it in a variable quantities. I have used ice trays for when I need just a little stock, like to saute some veggies or to add a few spoonfuls to sauce or gravy. I also use muffin tins to make cup sized quantities. I use those to add to rice, quinoa, couscous, and some pastas.

Finally, I freeze larger quantities in quart-sized mason jars, or large plastic yogurt containers (usually about 32 oz). The larger quantities are perfect for soup and stews and anytime you want to boil something but add more flavor than using plain water. I LOVE making mashed potatoes by boiling the potatoes in veg stock or chicken broth. All kinds of extra flavor! When I use the ice cube trays or muffin tins, I freeze in the trays then pop them out and put them all in a large freezer bag. Then I just grab a hunk of stock from the freezer as needed.

What kind of scraps to save for stock:

I try to ensure that I end up with a good variety of veg parts when I put them into my pots to boil, so if one vegetable is a little bitter, like eggplant, another one will balance it with some sweetness, like carrots or sweet potatoes. The addition of leftover herb stems really pumps up the flavor of the stock like no store-bought kind you’ve had. I also personally like to ensure there are some tomato and potato parts in my stock – I’m not sure why, but I just think the stock needs those basic flavors.

Tomato canning waste made a nice stock ingredient

Leftover parts from roasted pumpkins went in my stock recently

Inner strings and seeds from roasted acorn squash is now veg stock

The boiled waste can still be composted, if desired, so you’ll be getting double duty from those scraps – cool, right?

I hope you’ll give the homemade stock trick a try. It really doesn’t take much extra time because you can boil it while you’re doing other kitchen duties, then you just have to strain and store it. If you’re anything like me, you’ll get a little charge out of making it yourself instead of buying it because you’ll know exactly what’s in it and you’ll know you took a little time to make something healthy and yummy for your family.

Fish tacos made with white fish fillets or shrimp, topped with a fresh and fruity, spicy pineapple slaw are great for a quick and easy dinner or casual dinner party or barbecue.

I’ll eat almost anything if it’s wrapped inside a tortilla. My Southwestern upbringing is responsible, I guess, but what else is simpler to make than a taco or a burrito? And what is more versatile? You can fill ’em with any combination of ingredients you have on hand – and I frequently do for a fast dinner. Maybe I need to do a whole taco series here on Cooking Ripe!

The Hubs shares my affinity for tacos and he adores fish tacos – which is awesome because they’re easy to make and they’re actually healthy! Winning!

The fun part of this fish taco recipe is making the slaw topping, which is also works as a simple and light side dish if you prefer. Combining the sweet pineapple with the cabbage and some fiery spices creates a super festive flavor combo and a nice crispy fresh topping for the fish. This week it was also a great way for me to use up the fresh pineapple and cabbage I recently received from my Bountiful Baskets order.

I have used different varieties of white fish for this recipe, including mahi-mahi, cod and tilapia and I’m sure halibut would be lovely as well. Use whatever you have on hand or whatever is on sale. I also love this as a shrimp taco, but the Hubs has that weird aversion to shrimp touching anything else, so I don’t get to use shrimp very often.

While I made these on the stove-top because it’s still too cold to grill out, these fish tacos would make a great spring or summer BBQ dish, too. It’s easy to throw the slaw together ahead of time, then just cook the fish when you’re ready to serve the guests and you’ll have an easy party meal. As always, do your thing with the ingredients – all measurements are close approximations and vary each time I throw it together.

Fish Tacos with Spicy Pineapple Slaw

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Serves	6-8 tacos
Prep time	20 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	30 minutes
Meal type	Appetizer, Condiment, Lunch, Main Dish, Side Dish
Misc	Child Friendly, Serve Hot
Occasion	Barbecue, Casual Party
Region	Mexican

Fish tacos made with white fish fillets or shrimp, topped with a fresh and fruity, spicy pineapple slaw are great for a quick and easy dinner or casual dinner party or barbecue.

Ingredients

• 4 white fish filets (I used tilapia. Mahi-mahi, cod or halibut – or a lb of shrimp are also good choices)
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 3 tablespoons chili powder, divided
• 1 tablespoon coriander
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1-2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon chipotle in adobo sauce (use more or less to taste – it’s very spicy)
• 1/2 head cabbage, finely shredded
• 3/4 cups pineapple, diced (fresh is best, but canned can be subbed (drain well))
• 1 avocado, diced
• 1/2 cup cucumber, diced (seeded, if you prefer)
• 4-5 green onions (thinly sliced, both green and white sections)
• 3/4 cups salsa
• 1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon red pepper flakes (use more or less to taste)
• 1 lime (sliced in half)
• 1 lemon (sliced in half)
• 12 corn tortillas (we prefer the white corn tortillas)
• cooking spray

Directions

Fish marinade
Step 1	Combine the oil, 2 tablespoons chili powder, coriander, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, chipotle in adobo in shallow dish. Place the fish fillets in the dish and spoon the marinade over them until they are coated in the sauce. Squeeze half the lime juice over the fillets. Place dish in fridge and let sit about 20 minutes.
Spicy pineapple slaw
Step 2	Combine cabbage, remaining chili powder, pineapple, avocado, cucumber, green onions, salsa, cilantro, and red pepper flakes in a medium bowl. Gentle stir to combine completely. Squeeze remaining lime and 1/2 lemon over mixture and stir. Store in fridge until ready to eat.
Preparation
Step 3	Heat a large skillet or grill pan over medium-high heat. Add oil to very lightly cover bottom of pan. Carefully add fillets to the pan. Cook 3-4 minutes per side (longer if you’re using a thicker piece of fish) turning only once. The thickest part of the fish should be fairly firm when pressed. It will also be solid white rather than translucent or pinkish in the middle.
Step 4	Steam the tortillas by spraying both sides lightly with cooking spray, then wrapping 6 tortillas at a time in a very lightly damp kitchen towel and microwaving for 1.5 minutes.
Step 5	Break up the fish fillets into smaller pieces with a fork, then fill tortilla shells with fish and top with slaw. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top before serving.

Notes

This recipe is very free-form and I change it up each time I make it. You can spice it up as much as you like by playing around with variations of peppers – add some green chiles, or some jalapeno or even more of the chipotle in adobo if you’re brave!

I have also used mango instead of pineapple and we like is just as much. I think it would be fun to grill the pineapple before adding to the slaw, too, because the grilling brings out the sweetness.

Garnish with tomatoes, hot sauce, cheese or sour cream to suit your tastes and pour a margarita and you’ll be set!

This recipe is very free-form and I change it up each time I make it. You can spice it up as much as you like by playing around with variations of peppers – add some green chiles, or some jalapeno or even more of the chipotle in adobo if you’re brave!

I have also used mango instead of pineapple and we like is just as much. I think it would be fun to grill the pineapple before adding to the slaw, too, because the grilling brings out the sweetness.

Garnish with tomatoes, hot sauce, cheese or sour cream to suit your tastes and pour a margarita and you’ll be set!

Related Posts:

I took a break from my pumpkin recipes long enough to cook up a new harvest meal. I’ve been thinking about a green chile soup since we roasted our Hatch green chiles last month (how to roast and preserve Hatch chiles), but hadn’t gotten to it yet. Then today I was thinking about an easy meal I could prepare early in the day so the daughter could take some home and then we could reheat later for dinner. The daughter loves potato soup and since I got several ginormous potatoes in my Bountiful Basket yesterday, so I decided it was time to make a green chile and potato soup – or chowder.

What exactly is the difference between a soup and a chowder? I didn’t know either, so I did a little research via Google. I learned that while the traditional definition of chowder is a thick seafood soup (ie. clam chowder), the modern definition seems to be a chunky soup thickened by potatoes, onions, milk or cream (ie. corn chowder). So, because I’m using potatoes to as a thickener I’ve decided to call this recipe a chowder instead of a soup (mostly because I’ve posted two soup recipes recently and I’m proving that I’m not in a rut).

This is an easy, free-form recipe (like the rest of my recipes, right?). It came together pretty quickly and would make an easy weeknight meal. It’s also pretty healthified as we only used a tablespoon or two of butter and no cream, flour or milk – and honestly, I think you could skip the butter and it would be just as good! The daughter took home a container for her dinner and the Hubs and I finished the rest ourselves. The Hubs loved the soup, I mean chowder. He liked the heat and creaminess, but lamented that the addition of bacon or ham would have made it that much better. I rolled my eyes, but feel free to take his advice and add some cooked bacon or ham to make a heartier soup chowder.

Dice onions, garlic, green chiles and potatoes to start chowder

Simmer potatoes with the rest of the ingredients

My frozen disc of cilantro sauce – I use this stuff in EVERYTHING

Hatch Green Chile and Potato Corn Chowder

Southwestern Green Chile & Corn Potato Chowder

Servings: 4-6

Ingredients:

(Don’t be fussy about measuring anything and add more or less spices or ingredients to taste)

Directions:

Serve with some crusty bread or warmed tortillas. Garnish with some parsley or cilantro.

Great soup chowder the next day, but you may need to add more stock or water to thin a bit as the potatoes continue to soak up the liquid. If you want a little more creaminess, you could add more butter or even some milk and blend into the mixture.

Notes for next time:

When the soup chowder was almost finished, I realized I should have included some little diced carrots, which would have added some nice color, but also even more texture and flavor. I think I might also play around with adding other peppers – a jalapeno, maybe, or a sweet red bell pepper. Also, I might play with the spices by adding some chile powder or a smidge of chipotle in adobo. Another twist might be to throw in some diced tomatoes, but that might change the chowder back to soup.

Leave a comment and let me know how your soup chowder turns out.

Related Posts:

This post is dedicated to my best friends: my Basset Hounds, Daisy and Lola. They have become more than the family dogs; they are our children. They were both rescue dogs who found their forever homes with us and have lived long and happy spoiled lives with our family. Sadly, with long lives comes geriatric health issues. In mid-November, Daisy was diagnosed with Lymphoma and is not expected to have more than a few more months with us. While we were still adjusting to that sad news, Lola was diagnosed with a liver condition and she declined very quickly, so we said goodbye to her just last week.

Lola

Daisy

So, in their honor, I write this post about making their homemade doggie treats. I make these about every two or three weeks and have meant to post the recipe and pictures, but just haven’t taken the time until now. I started making these when we realized that our cheaper dog food and treats were causing some digestion issues for both dogs, but especially Lola. I started reading about and buying healthier grain-free foods for them and then I found some recipes for dog treats and figured that if I made them, I would know what was in them and it would likely be less expensive than the store-bought fancy kind.

I use a version of the Woofies recipe found on the Kitchen Muse blog. I add carrots and usually use about 1/2 white and 1/2 wheat flour. I have also used mashed sweet potatoes and spaghetti squash in place of the pumpkin when I had those leftovers. Dogs can eat many of our household veggies and fruits, but be careful as some are not safe. According to WebMd, we should NOT feed our dogs the following vegetables or fruits:

On the safer side, we can share these:

Here’s how to make All Natural Dog Treats:

Since I do this every two weeks, I’m not fussy about ingredient amounts and I don’t worry about presentation (no, I don’t have the bone-shaped cookie cutter!). I’ll show you my no fuss, simple method.

Roughly chop up a couple of carrots. I was using up some late garden baby carrots, and left the peels on and some of the stringy roots because the hounds don’t care :).

Spray your food processor bowl, lid, blade, etc. with some non-stick cooking spray. This is a sticky dough so this helps with cleaning up. Throw the carrots in the food processor with the blade attachment and give it a whirl or three. Alternately, you could grate the carrots for a finer consistency if you’re not sure your pooch is a carrot lover.

Dump in the rest of the ingredients and turn on the processor and let it go until you have a soft dough ball. If it’s looking more wet and sticky than doughy, add more flour. If it’s super stiff, add a little more pumpkin or some water. You want to end up with something a little firmer than pie dough because you’re going to roll it out and don’t want it too sticky.

Flour your workspace and roll out half of the dough. I don’t care if it’s symmetrical, I just care that it fits on the baking sheet. I learned that it’s easier to cut it into smaller pieces after I move it to the baking sheet.

Then…..(I think I’m pretty genius to think of this one) I use a pizza cutter to slice it up into bite-sized pieces. Brilliant, right? Again, I’m so not fussy about size and shape – and neither are the pups. I don’t spread out the pieces or anything because they don’t really expand in the oven.

I pop them in the oven for about 45 minutes. They are done when they are pretty hard. If they are softer, they won’t last in a container on the counter as long. If you cut yours larger, they may also take longer to harden. Admittedly, this batch went a little too long because I got distracted and left them in a little long, so they’re a little darker than usual. Daisy said she didn’t mind.

Let them cool, snap the pieces apart and toss into a jar and you and poochie are all set!

All Natural Dog Treats:

Ingredients:

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray food processor parts with non-stick spray for easier clean up later.

2. Rough chop carrots, then place in food processor with blade attachment. Whirl for a few seconds until carrots are finely diced.

3. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor and process until a firm dough ball forms. Add flour or pumpkin/water to mixture as needed to get to the desired consistency.

4. Place half the mixture on a well-floured surface, then roll out to about 1/2 inch thickness. Transfer rolled dough to a baking sheet. Use a floured pizza cutter or sharp knife to slice the dough into about 1 inch pieces.

5. Repeat with the second half of the mixture, placing onto a second baking sheet.

6. Bake for about 45 minutes until pieces are hardened. Cool, then snap pieces apart and place in air-tight container.

Your pup will ADORE you even more now! Mine know when I’m making these now and hover about my feet while I’m mixing up the dough. Lola used to be against carrots, but once she got used to the carrots in the treats – because they were TREATS – she decided she liked them and I added them periodically to her food, too. Pumpkin is good for digestion – in people and dogs – so if your pooches have delicate stomachs, these treats may help settle them when they get indigestion.

For other doggie treat recipes, check out my “Doggies” board on Pinterest.

UPDATED: See bottom of post.

This year I planted tomatoes for the first time. I had planned to only have three plants because I wasn’t convinced that I would enjoy growing them – or be successful. Since I didn’t know a lot about the many plant choices, I ordered a variety pack from Burpees. One of those was called the Super Sweet 100 Hybrid, described as a high-producing sweet cherry variety. Then a friend gave me a couple of additional plants, which turned out to be cherry varieties, as well. So, out of five plants, I have three that are cherry! Know what that means? I have MILLIONS of itty bitties, and I wasn’t prepared for the influx of the little sweeties.

Cherry tomato plants produce MILLIONS of sweet little tomatoes!

I started exploring other food blogs to figure out how to preserve the giant harvest of mini tomatoes and learned that while it is possible to can them, most people don’t because most people don’t like to leave the skin on canned tomatoes and most people refuse to peel 1000 cherry tomatoes in order to get a couple of pints of canned tomatoes. Personally, I’m not terribly averse to skins and I do throw some cherry maters in my salsa, but decided I wanted to do something else with the little guys since I’m canning the big ‘uns.

What to do with all of those little yummies?

I learned a simple, fast and super yummy trick for roasting and then preserving cherry tomatoes. I’ve seen several versions of this technique, so I am by no means claiming to have thought of it myself! As always, I try to put a little of my own spin on it and show you how easy this savory delight is to make and how versatile the finished product can be.

Roasted cherry tomatoes are simple and versatile

I started with about a pound of cherry tomatoes, which fits in one jelly roll pan and makes about one half pint of the mixture. I only have one jelly roll pan so that’s all I make at a time – you could make more if you have multiple pans.

Preheat the oven to about 425 degrees. Prepare the tomatoes by slicing each of them in half. TEDIOUS! I hate tedious! Let’s make this faster. I wish I remember where I saw this trick (somewhere on Pinterest, I’m sure), but the person who invented it is a genius. Here’s what you do: find two plastic lids of the same size. I use the kind from the big Greek yogurt containers (cottage cheese, sour cream, etc.). Set one lid, label side down and fill the lid with tomatoes. I find it works best if you use similar sized tomatoes in each batch.

Fill the first lid with the tomatoes

Fit them in as snugly as you can, then place the other lid, label side facing up on top of the tomatoes, making a little tomato sandwich.

Place the second lid on top of the tomatoes

Now, press down on the sandwich firmly and begin slicing into the tomatoes with an very sharp knife. If you don’t keep the pressure firm, the tomatoes will escape out the backside of the sandwich. Sometimes I do rotate it a bit, but do not pull out the knife, which would make it messy.

Press firmly on the top while slicing through the tomatoes

Viola! Quick work made of slicing up a handful of cherry tomatoes! I told you it was genius!

Like magic, they’re all sliced in one move!

After the tomatoes are halved, place them in a medium sized bowl. Peel, but do not chop a few cloves of garlic and add to the bowl of tomatoes. Remember that garlic mellows out when roasted, so feel free to add more!

Add some garlic cloves to the bowl of tomatoes

Add about a 1/4 cup of EVOO to the bowl and gently stir to coat all tomatoes and garlic cloves. Dump the contents of the bowl onto the pan and spread the tomatoes and garlic out into a single layer. It doesn’t matter if the tomatoes sit cut side up or down.

Spread the garlic and tomatoes into a single layer on the pan

Sprinkle the spices and salt and pepper over the mixture and place in the oven. Roast for about 20-30 minutes. I like a little charring on the edges, so I wait until I see that before I pull them out. Be careful, though, because you can go from a little char to a major scorch in a matter of a minutes. My pan below may have gone a little too long.

Roast until you see a little charring on the edges of the tomatoes

Let the mixture cool on the pan. The second they are cool enough to eat, taste them! (Caution: I have burned my tongue more than once by diving in too soon!). Amazingness, right? Super savory flavors that make you want to lap it up off the pan. Depending on how much you eat off the pan, you now have a nice little batch of roasted yummies to add to tonight’s dinner, or save in a jar for a future recipe.

Cool then taste!

If I want to save them for another day, I scoop the mixture into a half pint (jelly size) jar. Be sure to get all of the drippings and the garlic (you can smash or chop the garlic to make for easier use later). Smoosh the mixture firmly into the jar and top with a splash of EVOO. Fill to nearly the top, but f you’re going to freeze it, leave about 1/2″ headroom. I have kept the mixture in the fridge for up to a week, but if I don’t think I’m going to use it quickly enough, I just pop it in the freezer. Defrost in the fridge overnight when ready to use.

Pour the mixture in a small jar for fridge or freezer

The mixture makes a perfect pasta topping, as is. Just prepare some pasta, warm the tomato mixture in a saute pan (add some pesto and/or a little tomato paste for more body) and then combine the pasta and tomato mixture for a super easy, but very savory supper. I will share my FAVORITE pasta dish with you in a future post soon, and we’ll use this recipe as our basic sauce starter.

Besides pasta, you could use this as a topping or stir it into many other dishes since it’s just a tomato and garlic combo. Think: stews and soups, stir into meatloaf or burgers, cassaroles, bruschetta, pizza, eggs, rice, veggie stir-fries, shrimp or fish topping, bean or green salads, etc. It also occurs to me that it could be pureed to create a smoother texture, making it even more versatile. Oooo…gotta try that!

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Serving size: makes about 1/2 pint

Ingredients:

Directions:

Notes for next time:

I think it would be fun to try a Mexican spin on the mixture by using Mexican spices instead of Italian and adding some green chiles or jalapenos to the roasting pan. This version could be used as a stir-in to taco filling and other Mexican dishes. Another nice addition to either version would be thick slices of onions and/or green peppers which also roast so nicely and pair well with tomatoes.

Leave a comment with your roasted tomato recipe ideas. Enjoy!

UPDATE:

When I wrote this post, I noted that maybe the roasted tomato mixture could be pureed into a smoother texture, making it even more versatile. I also thought it would be fun to add some onions and bell peppers to the roasting pan to include even more savory flavor. Well! Last night I tried both and it turned out to be simply delicious and got rave reviews from the Hubs. He isn’t quite as enamored with the texture of the plain roasted tomato mixture as I am, so the smoother version works great for him. I just had to share!

Here’s how:

Prepare cherry tomatoes and garlic as above, but add chopped pieces of bell pepper and onions. I had some pearl onions (over-grown green onions) from the garden, so I used those. You can just chunk up about half an onion. Toss with olive oil, as described above and roast the same way.

Next, dump the mixture into a bowl and use the immersion blender to puree to the desired consistency (or cool then use a food processor or blender).

Blend with food processor, blender or immersion blender to desired consistency

I added a dollop of my basil pesto, a little salt and pepper and about 1 Tbsp of sugar, but mostly because I was experimenting with the flavors. It was great, as is, before adding ingredients. Just tweak to your own tastes and you end up with great marinara sauce. I served mine over open-faced (chicken) meatball sandwiches and the Hubs asked for seconds. Enjoy!

Today was a busy food prep and preservation day here at the casa. I worked on preserving garden tomatoes (canned and roasted/frozen – we’ll talk about that later) and the Hubs roasted and packed 25 pounds of Hatch green chiles.

If you are not familiar with Hatch green chiles, you have not been living life! Those of us who live in the Southwest rely on Hatch green chiles to feed our spicy appetites. They are grown in Hatch New Mexico and they are considered to be the primer chiles in all of North America. You may be more familiar with an Anaheim chile, which is a cousin to the class Hatch chile.  They come in various heat levels, but the medium provides a nice bit of heat that is not going to light your tonsils on fire. Every year around Labor Day, the local big box store offers Hatch chiles by the case. You can even have them roasted outside the store so you can take them home pre-roasted and then just clean and freeze – or even just freeze and clean later. At our house, we have purchased the big box chiles several times and had them roasted for easy preservation. Anytime the Hubs wants to make his famous green chile (stew), he can take out a baggie, peel and seed and be ready to go.

But this year, Bountiful Baskets offered 25 pounds for only $18.00, which was less expensive than the big box’s basic price. With my new “scratch cooking” attitude, I thought it would be prudent to buy the less expensive chiles and roast them at home. And by roast them at home, I mean that the Hubs could roast them out on the grill. He grew up watching his dad do the same, so I knew he could figure it out. He agreed and our box arrived Saturday. 25 pounds looks bigger than it sounds.

25 lbs is…well, a lot!

Because chiles have a tougher outer skin than another type of pepper, like a bell pepper, it is better to remove it before cooking. That’s where the roasting comes in. Roasting blisters the outer skin, making it easier to remove. You can roast them in the oven under the broiler, or out on the grill. Given that it’s still warm in most of the country, the grill is probably the better way to go – and you can probably do more at a time on the grill. The Hubs happily set up his ‘shop’ out in the carport by pre-heating the grill and setting up a card table to use as his workspace. Once the grill was heated to low-medium heat, he loaded up both levels with chiles.

Roast the chiles on a low-medium fire, turning as they blacken.

See the black parts? That’s good! Keep turning the chiles, blackening them on all sides. While you don’t want to become charcoal briquettes, you do want them to be charred all over. Once they are finished, remove from the grill and place in a bowl covered with plastic wrap. Since we were doing a huge quantity, the Hubs used a big garbage bag. Placing them in the bag or covered bowl allows them to steam, which helps the skin separate from the chile, making removal easier.

Placing the roasted chiles in a big bag or plastic-covered bowl allows the chiles to steam for easier peeling.

Once all of the chiles are roasted, you can either peel and seed them or you can just go ahead and bag them up in freezer bags for immediate freezing. We did a little of both – well, mostly we bagged them up and only peeled and seeded some for easier food prep later. If you bag them, be sure to use freezer bags – or you could always use glass or plastic containers. The little baggies can then be combined into larger freezer bags for double protection from freezer burn. When you place the roasted chiles in the baggies, seal them immediately because it helps that steaming process. Then let cool completely before freezing. The Hubs knows how much he usually uses for making his chile, so he bags up the amount he likes. We don’t weigh or measure much around here, we eye-ball proportions. Here’s what they looked like:

We ended up with 19 little bags of roasted chiles. I took out probably about two bags to peel and seed.

For the chile I wanted to peel and seed before freezing, I put them into a glass bowl and covered with plastic wrap. The longer it sits and steams, the better. Basically, let it sit and cool, then take it out and peel off the blackened skin and pull off the stem. Note: Some recommend wearing gloves while handling chiles, but I like to live on the edge and never do – and had no issues. Finally, scrape out the seeds – I like to rinse the seeds out under some running water. You should end up with chiles that look like this:

Peeled and seeded chiles

Once clean and dry, you can go ahead and cook with them immediately or throw them in the fridge for tomorrow, or freeze for later use. I knew that I would be more likely to use them if they were diced and ready to go – like those little cans from the store. So, I diced them up and packed them tightly into some small glass jars (I think they were marinated artichoke jars). Remember, if you’re freezing, you can use up-cycled jars and lids, but if you’re actually canning, you must use mason jars with new lids. To avoid freezer burn and to allow me scrape spoonfuls of green chile out whenever I need some for a recipe, I mixed in a few teaspoons of olive oil. I packed them really tightly to prevent air bubbles, also. Now I have three little jars of ready-to-go diced chiles in the freezer.

Pack diced chiles with olive oil so you can scrape out spoonfuls as needed.

Very tightly pack the chiles to express air bubbles and prevent freezer burn.

I probably should have taken the time to clean up more of the chiles before freezing, but with the tomato preservation going on simultaneously, I was not up to it. That said, if you do a big batch like this and do take the time to clean more, I would recommend doing a combo of dicing and leaving some whole and then maybe slicing some into strips. That way you would have a variety of options you could pull out of the freezer for later.

What would you do with all of those options? Well, here in the SW, we would argue that you could add green chile to almost anything you cook, but you may not be quite so inclined. Obviously, you can put green chile into anything Mexican: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, guacamole, salsa, pico de gallo, etc. Chile relleno is a classic green chile recipe (the Hubs and I are working on remembering how his mama used to make the non-deep fried, old-school version). I also use green chile to add flavor and a little heat to classic bean chili, and various soups, chowders and stews. You can also wake up boring burgers and other sandwiches with strips of green chiles – I ADORE an occasional classic egg sandwich with green chiles. Basically, like a bell pepper or even an onion, you can throw green chile into anything you want to add a little flavor to. There are many websites dedicated to green chile recipes; I pinned some ideas onto my “Green Chile” board on Pinterest. Also, check out Cooking Ripe’s Facebook page for more green chile tips and tricks. Check out my Southwestern Green Chile & Potato Corn Chowder recipe.

I’ll show you a few of our family recipes that feature green chile soon. Here’s a sneak peek at the Hub’s green chile (which is what we call green chile pork stew). He makes it the way he learned growing up. We usually make it into enchiladas or wrap it up into burritos. I know, I said was mostly going to show you super healthy recipes, but it’s Hatch chile season, so we have to have some old fashioned enchiladas, right? All things in moderation.

Green Chile (pork stew)

Please reply below to share your favorite green chile recipes.

(Part 1 of a series)

Before & After (in progress)

During the past year I’ve learned how to lose weight and get healthy by relearning how to eat. I learn well by example, so it was super helpful for me to read other people’s stories and testimonials on the various blogs and websites I follow – but not only for the motivational factor. I like to know specifically what people are doing so I can steal their tricks.

So as a follow-up to my last post, I thought I would write more specifically about what I actually do and eat because it might help someone find a new trick for their “health bag.” This time I’ll focus on food, starting with breakfast.

As I explained in the last post, I follow a Paleo lifestyle (I don’t like the word “diet” because it has too many negative connotations). That means I don’t eat grains, dairy, legumes or sugar. I also avoid packaged, processed “food” as much as possible. If you’re like I used to be, you’re thinking, So, what DO you eat? Nothing is left! Well, I just eat real food.

Let’s start with breakfast:

I don’t love having to cook breakfast after having been a cereal girl for my whole life, but I’ve learned that if I eat a good, balanced (includes fat, protein, carb) breakfast, I’m not hungry until lunchtime or later so I don’t snack all morning like I used to when I was on the cereal plan.

Basic Paleo breakfast

Basic: Two eggs, fried or scrambled in a little bacon grease; some breakfast meat (2-3 slices of bacon or some crumbled sausage or chorizo – probably bout ½ cup); 1/4-1/2 white potato. Some Paleo folks don’t do white potatoes, but I have learned that I need a little more resistant starch and carb in my diet, so do include organic white potatoes. I often pre-bake them and have them ready to do a quick fry in the morning. I also like to pre-cook my meats, so I only have to warm them while the eggs are cooking – or just throw it all together as a skillet meal. I recommend buying locally raised, pastured meat, if you can and/or opting for the nitrate-free, uncured breakfast meats at the grocery store. It’s also easy to find locally grown, pastured eggs which are likely better than what you’d find at the store. Finally, I need to learn to get more greens into my breakfast, too, so I’m working on that during my Whole 30.

Paleo Quiche: I like to make a quiche on Sunday evenings to have in the fridge for grab and go breakfasts during the week. I can just quickly warm a slice and don’t have to break out the frying pan (read: lazy). I make my quiche with a potato crust (sweet or white), prepared by slicing the potato on a mandolin slicer, then arranging in the bottom and sides of the glass quiche pan (greased with coconut oil). Then I season the potatoes and bake the crust for about 15 min on 350 (until the potato is fork-tender). Then I prepare a regular quiche filling of cooked breakfast meat of choice, sautéed veggies like spinach, kale, squash, onion, etc. a little salsa or favorite spices and then scramble up about 6 eggs (or more depending on size of pan) and pour it all over the cooked crust. Cook about 20-30 min at 350 or until eggs are set in the middle. I’ve also done this in muffin tins for egg muffins, using a single slice of potato as the bottom crust. Top the quiche with some sliced avocado and you’ve got a fast, nutritious breakfast. I don’t have a picture of my quite, but here’s a recipe I used for inspiration.

For beverage I drink coffee. I used to be a French vanilla creamer addict. Really – I would panic if I didn’t have any in the fridge for the next day and I bought it in half gallon cartons. Have you read the ingredients list on those creamers? I’m not sure there’s any actual “cream” in there! It’s a chemical sh** show, so I did give that up pretty early into my Paleo journey. But I still don’t like black coffee, so I had to find a substitute and went to a combo of coconut milk and local raw honey. I tried almond milk but it’s a little gritty, to me. I was buying the cartons of Silk coconut milk, but now that I’m doing the Whole 30, I had to give it up because it has carrageenan, which is a known gut irritant and not allowed during W30. Well, neither is honey (no sweeteners of any type), so currently, I’m using pure coconut milk only. Eh. It’s ok and it’s better than black, but I’m not sure I love it – yet. I’d like to learn to either drink the coffee black so I don’t have to worry about my “cream and sugar” or just give up the darn coffee. Not high on my to-do list right now, though.

I’m also adding a tablespoon of Great Lakes Gelatin to my coffee (it’s tasteless) to help with joint and hair health. My hair suffered from being a little too low carb, so that’s why I now include resistant starch and gelatin. It’s all a learning process.

Other Paleo folks (the Hubs calls them Paleans, which sounds a lot like aliens), advocate letting go of the usual breakfast paradigm of eggs, bacon, etc. and just eating whatever protein, fat and carb you have. I’m sure it works for some, but I just don’t like roast chicken and carrots for breakfast – yet. Maybe my tastes will change eventually.

Next time, I’ll share my favorite lunch options.

Again, here’s a great list of Paleo resources:

People often ask me how I am losing weight and getting healthy, so I thought that my one

year milestone was a good time to tell my story. Apologies for the length, but it’s a whole YEAR’s worth of stuff about my life! I hope my story will encourage and inspire others and also help people understand why I do (and eat or not eat) what I do today.

The Dark Days

It isn’t like lightning struck or anything dramatic made me decide to change my relationship with food. It was more of a series of events that led me to start making choices that eventually led me down the path to a whole new lifestyle.

So it was July of 2013 and I was sick and tired. Sick of what? I didn’t know. I had been working some crazy long hours and I thought I was just worn down.

I had to go to my annual “lady physical” on July 1st and I had to have a fasting blood test, so I went without my morning coffee and bowl of cereal. I had trouble finding the doctor’s office. Yeah, I’ve been there many times and it’s a small town. I kept turning down the wrong streets and driving in circles. I finally found my way and just wanted to sit in the car and cry (I now know I was suffering from “grain-brain”). My longtime doc had retired so I had a new girl. She didn’t know me enough to see I was a mess and I was so out of it that I had trouble articulating how I felt. I told her I thought I had a sinus infection (because I often did) and she prescribed some antibiotics, and sent me on my way.

Our annual 4th of July festivities were painful for me because I felt like crap and it was so tiring to just get through my volunteer duties and social activities. I remember hiding out at home as much as I could.

May 2011

Then we decided to buy tickets to a three-day outdoor music festival in Telluride in September and I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to hack it given my current state of health and lack of stamina. I didn’t want to slog through the whole thing and ruin it for myself or my friends and husband. Instead of looking forward to my favorite late-summer event, I was scared it would be a repeat of the 4th of July.

THEN I STEPPED ON THE SCALE. O.M.G. doesn’t begin to describe how bad it was. An all-time high for me sent me into an all-time low feeling about myself. How could I let this happen? I knew better! I knew what healthy eating was all about! I didn’t eat fast food! I knew how to cook! I even grew a garden and learned to CAN MY OWN TOMATOES, dammit!

I have always struggled with weight. I always felt like the pudgy girl in elementary school, but I thinned out in my teen years, thanks to skating and color guard activities (and a nasty bout of Mono!). I maintained a thinner weight, but not a healthy relationship with food through college. But after marriage and a stressful teaching career, I gained weight regularly over several years. The previous 10 years or so I had “dieted’ by doing the usual low fat, low calorie thing and I did my best to exercise regularly, and while I’d lose five pounds here and there, it was always so, so hard and it felt like a losing battle with the same 5 pounds – well, except I usually added some new ones in between “diets.”

So I felt like crap, weighed a ton, was fearful of upcoming fun events. Time to diet. Again. sigh.

May 2012: My daughter’s college graduation. Cringing about having my photo taken

Inspiration

About that time I saw a friend of a friend’s Facebook post proudly proclaiming she was down to her pre-child weight (she’s about my age: 45) and that she did it mainly by walking around town daily and using some willpower against junk food. Walk and don’t eat junk. Sounds simple, I thought. If she can do it, I should be able to do it, right?

Then I saw an old friend who had had weight loss surgery. I asked her how her eating habits had changed since surgery and she said her biggest ah-ha moment was learning how much to eat. She said she had no idea before surgery what a “normal” serving size was. Hmm, I thought. I bet I have the same problem.

Small Changes

So with little fanfare, I decided to go for a walk – in the mornings before my life got in the way – and to try eating smaller portions and use a little willpower. I wrote that huge number from the scale on a post-it note and put it next to my computer so I could see it ALL day long. I found an app on my smartphone called Map My Walk and took my first morning walk on July 14, 2013. I had been a walker before, so this was not so momentous, but the key turned out to be doing it in the morning because I learned to love the way it helped me wake up my brain and my body first thing. I liked watching my stats on the app improve from day to day, then week to week.

I tackled the “diet” as I had done before, cutting calories and fat and working at those smaller portions and eating less often. Boo! I was HANGRY! It’s supposed to suck when you’re dieting, right? Sigh. Yes. I even did some calorie counting in My Fitness Pal and I HATE, I mean really, really HATE counting things. I’m a word girl, not a number girl, so it’s really painful for me to count. And since I really do cook mostly from scratch, it’s a pain to measure and then input every little ingredient in the recipe into the system. But at least I got a sense of how much I was eating, which did help to some degree. What I now know is that I was tracking quantity over quality. You can use up your whole calorie count for the day on a few slices of pizza.

A Better Way

So with a ton of willpower and pain I eventually lost my usual five pounds. But, along the way I started doing some research. I’m not sure exactly what led me down the road to the Paleo lifestyle, but I remember my doctor mentioning it once when I was complaining of weird, unidentified stomach issues. My response had been something like, “What would I eat if I couldn’t have wheat, for god sakes?” I guess I was looking for something, anything that would move the “diet” along at a better pace. A few friends mentioned doing it on Facebook and maybe my brother, the healthy one in the family, had mentioned he was following it. It sounded extreme, especially for someone who can’t even manage to count a calorie, but something about it resonated with me. Maybe I needed something extreme in that moment, so on September 4, 2013, about 10 days before that 3-day music festival, I quietly slid into the Paleo diet. I didn’t tell anyone; I just figured I’d give it a go and see how it felt. My husband didn’t even notice because he’s a meat lover and was pleased as long as meat arrived on his plate each dinner.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Paleo plan, in simplest terms, it eliminates grains (not just gluten!!!), sugar, legumes and dairy – all for various reasons, but basically because they cause digestive and other inflammatory issues in the human body. Considering I was a bread/pasta/sugar/bean/milk/cheese addict, this was pretty damn drastic! At first, I refused to give up my “healthy” and beloved breakfast of plain whole-grain Cheerios with skim milk, a sliced banana and blueberries. I had eaten cereal for breakfast nearly every single day of my life! It wasn’t Captain Crunch, after all. It was healthy whole-grain Cheerios. The plain ones! And there was fruit on top and no-fat milk! Doesn’t get any healthier, I reasoned.

Well…so I think I lost a few pounds at first, and then stalled, so I read something about too many carbs, which I had never really paid attention to before. I input my breakfast into that damn calorie counter and found out it was loaded with carbs. Sigh. Time to give it up. I started making eggs for breakfast. What a pain in my big ass. But, what a clearer head I have in the morning now.

Small Victories

Oh, the 3-day music festival? I was only a little ways into Paleo and wasn’t completely clean yet, but I did get through it better than I had expected back in July. I’m sure my daily walking and generally improved diet helped. It rained for three days: think Woodstock. Yeah, but I survived and wasn’t totally blown up afterwards. Baby steps.

From there I just kind of hung with it and pounds starting coming off much more easily than they had when I followed the Standard American Diet (SAD) rules. By mid-November I had lost 20 pounds! Real progress – freaking finally!

December 2013: First time in years to happily pose for a photo

Relearning Nutrition

Meanwhile, I was reading tons of blogs and listening to podcasts learning about the Paleo lifestyle and why it’s better for us than the SAD. It all starting making so much sense! Grains are like crack in our bodies and when we eat them, we want more, more, more – not because we don’t have will-power, but because our hormones whack out on them and think we NEED more. I learned how different the grain of today is from the grain of even 50 years ago, thus causing so very many health issues for modern humans. Research has drawn very strong connections between the raise in common health issues like diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and many auto-immune diseases to the consumption of grains. I’m not going to get into all of the science here because you can read more about it, if you’re interested, on your own. But basically, consumption of grains, sugar, legumes and dairy creates a variety of inflammatory reactions in our bodies, which then causes a myriad of other health issues. It’s NOT about cutting fat and total calories!

The REAL Motivation

Learning about the health benefits of my new way of eating really helped it solidify for me so it wasn’t just about losing weight anymore. Have I mentioned how type II diabetes runs rampant – RAMPANT! – through my family? Or how both of my parents died of completely preventable diseases at a young ages? Mom was emphysema (yes, she smoked till the end) at 65, and dad was diabetes and all of the side effects, including the loss of one leg below the knee and half of one foot, at 73. Sigh. What if?? What IF they had learned the right information about health and diet before it was too late?

And did I mention that my daughter turned 22 in 2013? I was 22 when she was born and I was 32 when my mom died. 32! Way. Too. Young. The light started to finally dawn on me that if I continued abusing my body as I had been before, I was going to inflict the same pain on my daughter that my parents’ diseases and deaths had inflicted on me. No! God no! I couldn’t put her through that!

So there was the real motivation to keep going. People ask me if I miss things like cake or beans or cheese. Yeah, sort of but not really anymore. Sure, at first it was hard because I had to unlearn how I had been eating all of my life. Cereal, bread and tortillas were the hardest for me. All of my go-to meals had involved one of those. If I was in a hurry, I made a PB&J sandwich or a quesadilla – but I put chicken and veggies or beans in with the cheese on the flour tortilla! Face-plant. All wrong. The good news is that I do cook and I like veggies. Contrary to popular media mythology, the Paleo diet is NOT all about meat. It’s about eating real food. Real food includes protein, vegetables, fruit, good fats, and nuts & seeds. There’s a lot more to it than meat (though the Hubs still likes that part, best). After you get the hang of focusing on what you can eat vs what you can’t eat, it’s just not that hard.

February 2014

Slow and Simple

The weight came off slowly, but regularly and it became pretty easy, really. I never had any major backslides, just normal two pound fluctuations on the scale. What I’m most proud of is that I have lived nearly a year of NORMAL life like this, which means it’s no longer a “diet”- now it’s a lifestyle. I have maintained my new lifestyle while doing things that used to cause backslides and weight gain. I have traveled for work and pleasure (including to Santa Fe during the Christmas holidays and to Vegas twice!); I have had stressful times at work and home; I have gone through ALL of the holiday seasons (I lost weight over Christmas holidays and 4th of July); I have mourned with friends as they have lost loved ones; I have BOUGHT A HOUSE and MOVED (is there anything more stressful?); I have put a dog to sleep; I have been to parties, concerts, large events, bars, restaurants; I have been too tired or busy (or lazy) to cook; I have had PMS about 12 times; I have been sad, happy, lonely, worried, stressed, bored and excited – and I have maintained my healthy lifestyle. I committed and that’s just how I live now.

Exercise?

Physically, I didn’t kill myself with a bunch of work-out regimens but I did try some new things and I’m fitter and stronger than ever. Besides walking every week day (I’ve logged 463 miles so far, with a goal of doing at least 500 in 2014), I’ve done some 30-day challenges (I can now plank for 2 min 15 seconds – on my elbows!) and I do a little work with strength training. I’ve also done three 5K event walks, with another color run/walk scheduled later this month.

Cheating?

Do I cheat? I don’t have “cheat” meals or “cheat days” where I throw it out the window for a period of time. I do have “cheat” bites, usually of my husband’s contraband, but that’s all I need to remind myself to quit it and do the right thing. I know if I have crap, I will feel like crap and now that I don’t feel like crap every day I really notice the difference. Before, on my SAD diet, I didn’t notice the difference because my body was used to feeling bad. It’s just not worth it to have cake and feel bloated, itchy and fuzzy brained the next day. I truly believe that I am what I eat, and everything that goes in my mouth impacts my body. I’d rather eat food that impacts it positively.

March 2014

Improved Health

And yes, there have been health benefits along with the weight loss:

• High blood pressure is gone so I don’t have to take daily meds.
• The constant sinus issues, which were attributed to seasonal or pet allergies, are nearly gone. I don’t take daily Singulair anymore. It was likely the grain and/or dairy causing all of my sinus inflammation. Duh. My perpetually clogged right ear is usually unclogged, too.
• The random skin issues are almost non-existent. I have had small bouts of eczema and/or psoriasis off and on all my life and my scalp was habitually itchy and scaly. My skin feels smooth and moist for the first time ever.
• Zits nearly never appear- finally, at age 45! I only get them if I allow myself those bites of crap mentioned above.
• PMS is very mild.  Hormones are much more balanced now.
• My chronic lower back pain is much improved. The walking and lack of inflammation have kept it at bay – I didn’t have to spend weeks icing it to recover from moving!
• Random stomach/digestive issues are gone. I used to have unexplained bouts of diarrhea and constipation, occasional squeezing pain on my left side, and lots of gas and bloating. I thought it all fairly ‘normal.’ Not anymore!

My health issues were relatively minor compared to those who have reversed diabetes, MS, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, autism, ADHD and other super serious health conditions following the Paleo lifestyle, but I think I just dodged what was an inevitable bullet that was heading for me had I not cleaned up my act. Sorry diabetes, you’re not getting this one!

April 2014: Same blouse as Dec. 13

Comfortable in My Own Skin

The BEST part is I feel whole again. I’m me, only better. Even when I was thinner in my younger years, I was never in control my health. Now I am. I am truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time in many years – or maybe ever. I have more weight to lose to be within the “medically acceptable” range, but I don’t have a certain number in mind. I’ll know when I get there and it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as I’m moving in the right direction. I have no visions of being a size 4 or anything. I just want to be able to wear cute clothes (like sleeveless shirts and a bathing suit!) and be as healthy as I can be.

I’m immensely proud that I found a way to do this in a way that is sustainable for the long term. I also LOVE that I didn’t buy a program, or join a system or anything like. I just relearned how to eat the right foods. Pretty damn simple in the long run

I no longer live in fear of my own limitations. The 4th of July was so much better this year! I did a lot more physically with my volunteer work and socially (the Hubs and I even danced a little), and I didn’t feel all strung out the whole time. We’re going to the 3-day music festival again, but this year I have to duck out a day early to go on week-long out of state business trip. There’s a challenge to my stamina! Yep, I’ll be ready.

What Now?

Looking forward to the one year anniversary of my healthier me journey, I have been thinking about what’s next for me. I feel like I have all the tools now, so what do I do now? I don’t want to just keep on keepin’ on because I fear that will lead to being too comfortable, which could lead to backsliding. I think I need to keep learning and trying new things and improving my overall health.
So, starting today I’m embarking on the Whole 30 program. It’s basically a 30-day strict Paleo challenge. Yeah, I’m already pretty strict but I have a few places where I can improve, so it’s just a tune-up, really. I need to:

• Break my honey and dark chocolate as sugar habit.
• Eat fewer nuts because I use them as snacks instead of more nutrient-dense foods.
• Eat more leafy greens and more veggies, overall.
• Expand my horizons by trying new foods (liver? sardines? Kombucha?).
• Decrease my non-food/chemical intake like MSG, soy, carrageen, guar gum, etc.
• Stop the occasional corn (yes, it’s a grain) intake via corn tortillas and (organic!) corn chips.

It will be interesting to see how these tweaks make me feel after 30 days. I assume I’ll feel even better and more energetic than I do now!

I know this is a lot of information for a blog post, but I know that reading other real people’s stories helped me stay focused during the last year. That simple Facebook post I saw last year inspired me to do something different, so maybe my story will inspire someone else to try something, too.

Cheers to REAL FOOD!

July 2014

For ideas on what to eat, see my The Nuts & Bolts: My Real Food Paleo Lifestyle series.

Resources: below is a list of link to books, blogs and podcasts I have read and listened to while on my first year journey. Most of them also have Facebook, Pinterest and other associated resources. If you are interested in learning more about eating real and the Paleo lifestyle, I encourage you to browse these resources.

October 2014 On-site work

Here’s why I’m not on a diet, yet I’m losing weight and reaching my health and fitness goals. When we go “on a diet” it implies we are doing something temporarily and that once we reach the destination (that magic number on the scale, typically) we can “get off” the diet and resume our normal activities. But…if our normal activities led us to the need for the original diet, won’t we just have to eventually go back “on a diet”? See the vicious circle? Yeah, we have all lived it. I lived it when I did the calorie counting, fat counting horror and never really lost the weight or regained my health. That, dear friends, is called the diet spin-cycle and it never ends until we stop going on diets.

September 2014

So, if you’ve read my previous posts (yes, I know they are few and far between – a girl’s gotta make a living and have time to cook, right?), you know I’ve relearned how to eat for health. I follow the Paleo lifestyle (see how I don’t even call it the Paleo diet?) and while I am close to reaching my health and weight loss goals, I’m not “on a diet” because it’s not something I’m going to jump on and off as needed to drop a few pounds or deal with a nagging health concern. I’ve relearned how to eat to make my body and mind happy, so why would I want to stop to eat the foods that caused me so much pain, guilt and frustration all those years? Yeah, they taste yummy (well, not so much anymore) but I no longer NEED to taste that yumminess after not having it for so long. I’m beyond happy eating what IS good for me and I simply don’t eat what is not. Real food tastes even yummier to me, so I don’t ever feel the deprivation I felt when trying to eat tasteless low cal or low fat foods – there was no butter or bacon allowed on those “diets” but I get to eat those as much as I want to now. See, no diet = yum.

My favorite eggplant and tomato, with shrimp – no pasta needed http://cookingripe.com/roasted-eggplant-tomato-pasta-the-best-pasta-youll-ever-eat/

I see a lot of friends struggling inside the diet spin cycle and I think it’s largely because of their mindset about the temporality of the “diet.” If you believe all foods are just either high or low calorie/fat, why not just have that bowl of alfredo pasta when you’re on vacation? You deserve the treat, right? You can always just eat less tomorrow – or next week, or after the first of the year, right? Well, it’s not just about eating less or more. Oddly, we rarely acknowledge the fairly immediate non-scale impacts of that bowl o’ pasta, yet we usually end up feeling super full, bloated, maybe a little gassy or constipated, and dopey, tired and lethargic. It’s the food hangover, also known as “Grain Brain,” a term coined by Dr. Perlmutter. Some “foods” cause these problems, along with more serious health issues related to leaky gut which contributes to many, many health problems including autoimmune disease, diabetes, candida, etc.

Eating out – PLENTY of healthy options

Chicken WITH bones and skin on!

But, let’s get back to the immediate, short term effects of the bowl o’pasta (or pizza or hoagie or dinner roll or pancake): the stomach and digestive upset and brain fog we often feel after eating grains, dairy, sugar, legumes and highly processed foods. When I first went Paleo, I had never made a conscious connection to how the food I ate made me feel in an hour, the next day and the next week – and how they hurt my overall productivity because I just didn’t feel “sharp.” Slowly, with the elimination of those fog-inducing foods, I found energy and clarity that I haven’t ever really had. Now, when I’m faced with the bread, or cookies or pasta options I just imagine myself feeling clunky, bloated and dull, so I have no desire to eat it when I can choose to eat something else that I love just as much – or even more – and feel sharp and energetic.

Real food is colorful

A few weeks ago I really noticed how true this is while I was working on-site with a client. I have to travel to the client’s training facility several times a year to support my company’s work. It’s a beautiful facility where we stay, eat and work for several days at a time. They have first class chefs on site and all of the food is just there for the eating – we don’t pay for anything – and there are snack stations set up about every 100 feet, lest you get famished walking from one room to the next. They offer many healthy, even gluten free, dairy free, vegetarian, vegan options to accommodate diverse dietary needs, but there’s just so much. So much. It’s like being on a cruise ship because of the endless opportunity to overeat and to blow the “diet.” Previously, despite my best intentions, I always overate and imbibed in the luscious afternoon snacks and desserts and chose pastas, sandwiches or doughy dishes at meals. I would also end up feeling so freaking tired by mid-afternoon and my brain wouldn’t function right, which led to me making mistakes at inopportune times. My digestion was always screwy and I’d have to spend extra time in the bathroom, if you know what I mean. I never really connected the dots, though. I thought it was just the stress and lack of sleep that also tends to come with these trips.

Soup is always good!

During my recent trips, I proved it’s all about the food quality, not just quantity. Last time I was there to support what is traditionally a very stressful project, and I had very early starts and some late nights, yet I felt sharp and “with it” all the way through. I didn’t have to over-caffeinate to get through the afternoons. I still ate delicious food, but I didn’t give into the bad foods because the return on my investment wouldn’t have been worth it. Ok, full disclosure: I did have one healthy [serving] spoonful of bread pudding and a few small handfuls of Jelly Bellys (from the many dispensers around the property!), but I know from experience that I can only have very small quantities, very occasionally before I feel the ill effects of larger helpings. I knew if I waded too far into the lake, I’d be drowning by the end of the project and why would I do that to myself? It felt good (and very satisfying) to be not only in control of my work, but in control of my body. When you feel good, physically, you also look good and exude confidence.

October 2014 (The Hubs enjoys my hippie look)

Is it easy to avoid all the goodies? Well, I’ll say it was fairly easy now because I’ve been Paleo for over a year, so I’ve learned a lot of tricks. It was more difficult for me when I was there last year at this same time. Also, because the sugar and other bad chemicals have left my system, I don’t crave them so much now. I know how to keep my blood sugar balanced by eating enough good fats and real carbs with protein at each meal, so I don’t succumb to the treats out of hunger. The hardest part is probably peer pressure because I’m often in a group of colleagues who do not understand my eating habits and don’t know the drastic changes I’ve made so they tend to encourage me to share in their over-consumption of refined carbs and sugar. That’s when I say I just don’t eat grains, sugar, dairy, etc. and I eat a bowl of fresh berries. That ends it usually – or they ask why and I get on my Paleo soapbox and you know how that goes…

My brother serving an early Paleo Thanksgiving dinner: no food coma

In the end, what makes it work is my own mindset – not some random number on the scale. This is simply how I live. I do this; I don’t do that. I eat real food; I don’t eat grains or dairy. It’s not temporary; I’m committed for the duration. There are no breaks for stressful times, holidays, parties, or dinners out with friends, etc. I never feel deprived. I stay on the wagon because it would be too hard to get back on and I would hate to undo the good I’ve done. I simply eat food that is tasty and is also good for my body. Very occasionally I also eat a little bite of contraband – but that’s after learning how to have just one bite and not the whole pie/cake/box of cookies. It took time to get here, but I know that when my mind shifted to a deep understanding of the connection between what I eat and how I feel and function, I was able to step out of that damn diet spin cycle for good.

Half meat, half veg: all cooked in healthy FAT

A great list of Paleo resources can be found at the end of this post.

I do a little holiday baking, but I have never attempted to make holiday candy, except for fudge. I remember my mom making divinity and date roll when I was growing up, but I never really learned to do it on my own. This year I got a hankering for the date roll I had growing up and started digging through mom’s old cookbooks looking for the recipe. Well, I found it, but it was actually just tucked into her very tattered Joy of Cooking circa 1943.

Inside an envelope that says, “It was in the electric frying pan book” I found a very old parchment-like sheet, folded into fourths with a pencil written recipe for date roll. Score! I have no idea who wrote on the front of the envelope, as it’s not my mom’s handwriting and I’m not sure who wrote out the recipe, but I’m guessing it was my grandmother. Clearly, it is very old and starting to deteriorate, so I’m really glad I found it when I did.

If you haven’t had date roll candy, it may sound odd, but it’s really good, I swear! I guess I don’t think about eating dates very often, but they’re actually pretty tasty. My mom really liked them and I remember her affinity for date shakes that she would get when we stopped off at the Date Tree, a famous road stop on California’s I-80, on our way to visit her best friend in Sacramento. While you do taste the dates in the candy, it’s also very sweet, like fudge, so it’s definitely a confection. It also has walnuts to give it some crunch. If you like fudge, you will probably like date roll.

I had to try the old recipe and see if I could make it work. Grandma’s recipe was a little vague. The list of ingredients says:

I had to assume that a package of dates in grandma’s day and a package in 2012 are probably not the same quantity. My package was 8oz. I also wondered about the milk. I use skim milk at home, but wondered if whole milk or some other variety might be better for this recipe. So I did a little internet research and found a recipe that used almost the same ingredients, but the quantities matched my 8oz package of dates, so I used those measurements instead. The other recipe also included butter, but grandma’s doesn’t. I looked at several date roll recipes and most seemed to have butter, so I figured I would go ahead and add it. I have to assume it would have been ok without it since the old recipe didn’t call for butter.

Here’s how I made it:

Following the original recipe’s instructions to “cook sugar, milk and dates until they form a soft ball in cold water (stirring while cooking)” I put the first three ingredients into a heavy saucepan and turned the heat to medium until the sugar dissolved.

I don’t know much about the rules of candy making, but fortunately I have my mother’s candy thermometer. It has lived in my utensil drawer for over 10 years now and I have never used it, so I hoped it still worked. I attached it to the pan and turned the heat up to medium high and stirred and stirred. After probably 5-7 minutes, it reached the “soft-ball” temperature on the thermometer.

That’s my mom’s really old, long-handled wooden spoon stirring the candy

Grandma’s directions then say, “Take from fire, add the nuts and vanilla and beat till very thick” so I removed the pan from the burner and added the nuts vanilla, and also the butter. I stirred it all together. It was quite thick and sticky.

Grandma then tells us to “Have ready a cold wet cloth, pour mixture onto cloth and roll up till cold.” I remember the rolled up candy in cloth in the fridge when I was a kid, so I knew what to do there, though I still don’t know why, exactly. The Hubs wondered into the kitchen when I was embarking on the project and proclaimed that he knew all about date roll, too, because his grandma made it, too. He asked if I had my cold cloth ready. I did! I ran a tea towel under very cold water, rung it out and laid it out on the counter to be ready for the rolling step. Once the candy was cooked, I carefully scooped it out of the pan onto the cloth, along the edge.

Then, I rolled it up and put it in the fridge to harden over night.

In the morning, I unrolled the snake-like affair and sliced off a piece to taste. Bingo, there it was! The familiar sweet date flavor from my childhood! Success!

The candy sits nicely in mom’s Depression-glass candy dish

Grandma’s Old-Fashioned Date Roll Candy

Ingredients:

Directions: