Green Soup

Breathe in, breathe out.

I finished our tax preparation yesterday, so now I can breathe ... and so can everyone else at our house!

Green soup is one of the favorite side dishes at our house.  It's a whole lotta nutrition in one serving.

The original recipe is found here.  I have mentioned green soup (here), but now it's time to share our version of this soup.

The original recipe does not call for bacon, but we really love bacon!  It is now a required ingredient.

A vegan version would omit the bacon and replace chicken stock with vegetable broth, and it would still taste good!

Slowly saute four pieces of bacon until cooked.  Add two chopped onions.  Add a glop of olive oil and about the same amount of water (next time I will not use olive oil, since bacon gives plenty grease).  Cover and turn the heat down, stirring occasionally:

Add about an inch of water to a large soup pot.  Add a large bag of kale.  Cover and cook until kale is steamed:

Rinse the kale with cold water.  Drain and repeat until it is no longer hot:

Place the drained kale in a large blender.  Add two cups chicken broth, 1/4 cup rice flour, a few dashes of cayenne or red pepper, and the bacon/onion mixture:

Puree in blender and place in sauce pot.  Cover and simmer on low before serving:

Here's one way to serve it, although lately we've been serving the soup in the smaller-size bowl (on the right):

It also makes great leftovers (note the repurposed ice cream containers):

Do you have a veggie-intensive recipe?

Paleo Meals and Future Sewing

Food first!  Can't live without it!

Liver

We like liver with onions and gizzards.  Of course, we start with bacon, cook it slowly for a long time in a large skillet, then add onions:

Then we cut the gizzards into bite-sized pieces, rinse very well, and add to the bacon and onions.  These have to simmer for 25-30 minutes:

Meanwhile, the chicken livers must be cut into bite-sized pieces, then rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed, and rinsed  ...  and rinsed - well, you get the idea.  The livers are added to the skillet, but turned over every three minutes or so until cooked.  This picture was taken just after they were added to the skillet:

Uh, I just realized that I don't have a picture of the finished dish, but this is how we like it best.

Steak

Here is a meal from a different day - steak, herbed zucchini, and onions sauteed with mushrooms:

Soup

We found a green soup recipe in the Reader's Digest magazine, and thought we'd try it.  It turns out to be an easy way to eat lots of greens.  It tastes pretty good, too!

Of course, one must start with two whole onions, chopped, and cook them until they are almost caramelized.  Meanwhile, cut up a large bunch of kale and steam or boil it in a large pot until it is soft.  The kale is drained and rinsed until cool, then pureed in the blender with chicken stock and the onions, with a little lemon juice, salt, and cayenne.  The soup is returned to the pot to heat until almost boiling.

Above is our variation on the recipe we found - click here.

Here is a picture of our green soup, served with chicken salad made by DH:

Picadillo

I also have a nice recipe for picadillo, which could loosely be translated as Cuban chili.

Start off a Picadillo Day by filling a coffee cup half-way with raisins.  Cover that with wine or rum, then let is soak for later.

Sautee 2 lbs of ground beef with a little water added.  Somehow the water makes it easier to chop the ground beef into uniform pieces.  Drain off the water when the meat is cooked:

Add two coarsely chopped onions to the ground beef and cook until the onions start to soften:

Place the meat in a large stew pot.  To the stew pot, add the remaining ingredients as shown left to right in the next picture:

• spices in a cup - lots of cinnamon, some allspice, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, cumin, oregano, cilantro, and chili powder
• raisins soaking in cup
• chopped tomatoes with no salt (we used 2)
• tomato paste
• stuff in bowl - drained sliced black olives (1/2 small jar), drained chopped stuffed green olives (medium can), drained capers (1/2 jar)

Cover the pot and turn the heat down, and let it simmer from five to 30 minutes.

Ladle into bowls and serve with a dollop of sour cream on top of each serving.

Here's what it looks like as a leftover - and a fine leftover it is:

Sewing

My next sewing project will be pillowcases and pillowcase liners.  Hah!  These pillowcase liners will just be more white pillowcases.  Here's the fabric for the pillowcases:

A simple sewing project should re-set my mojo, since I did not enjoy the hand-sewing part of the little purses.

What do you do to re-set your sewing mojo?

One-Pot Dinners

One-pot dinners were made for me.

If I could just throw everything into one pot and call it dinner, I would.

I made the veggie tonight.  It was kale.  I threw everything into the big pot, forgetting that I was supposed to saute the bacon and onions first, not all together.  It took a while for the kale to defrost.

I'm surprised that I bothered  remembered to cut up the bacon  - before I cooked it.

Also in that pot were several pats of butter and about half a cup of coconut water.

The only reason I make kale occasionally is because we need to eat more veggies, and kale packs a real nutritional punch.

Hubby tolerates it.  Cousin likes it (I think).  I love it.  Well, these statements are only true if bacon is included.

Food preparation would be so much easier if all I had to do was throw stuff in.  That's what I like about making smoothies.

Packaged Foods not always Convenient

I recently bought a package of pre-cut kale because the bunches were not available.

I should have remembered from previous experience that these bags tend to be full of stems.  What you see here is half a bag of kale that I had already blanched (boiled for just a minute or two).  I let it cool before I removed the stems.  That's what I get for being in a hurry:

I hope I don't forget this lesson again!

Have you ever found a "convenience food" that was not so convenient?

Not Quite Jumpin' Jack Flash

... it's a gas, gas, gas!

OK, so it just smells like gas, of a particular type.

Why?

Oh, just some vegetables I cooked up as part of our supper tonight.  It's important when eating Paleo to include lots of vegetables in out diet.

Innocent.

Cute.

Little.

Stinky.

Vegetables.

Yeah, those.

Brussels sprouts.

Yummy!  If you never liked them before, I challenge you to try them this way.  It's the only way DH will eat them.  Hah!  It's pretty much the same way we make kale in that it requires bacon, butter, and onions.  To see how we fix kale, click here.

Start with a large pan.  Cut two strips of bacon into pieces, about 1/2 inch.  Also chop half an onion.  Slice about 1/4 stick of butter.  Put these into a large skillet, and turn the heat on low.

Cut off the stem ends of a package of Brussels sprouts.  Of course I think to check the amount on the package - after I've thrown away the package and taken out the trash.

Cut each Brussels sprout into quarters, lengthwise, so the leaves will stay attached to the core.

Add the Brussels sprouts to the pan, cover, and cook on low, stirring occasionally.

When they start to soften and some of the edges appear slightly charred, they are done.

Unless, of course, you want more edges charred.

They taste great, but after I took the dogs for a walk and came back into the house, it smelled like someone had been passing gas, and lots of it.

DH insists the he can - literally - fart around tomorrow, since he works at home, and not bother anybody.  I, however, risk offending people where I work.  Oh, boy ...

Recent Paleo Food

We've been trying to eat Paleo, and do best when we are at home.  Mark's Daily Apple is one of our favorite web sites for information.  He has a section on the sidebar called "Primal 101" that is a guideline for people who want to eat this way or to learn more about it.

Here's the side dish we had recently with supper.  Kale is a nutrient-dense, green, leafy vegetable, that we can only seem to tolerate when it has bacon in it.  Instead of parboiling it before preparing the dish, I rely on the water left inside the curliness to steam the kale in the skillet:

1. Cut up two pieces of bacon, and sautee slowly in large skillet with butter and/or coconut oil, some chopped onions and/or garlic, and 1/4 cup shredded coconut.
2. Cut up half a bunch of kale, rinse and drain two times, and add to the skillet.
3. Stir in 1 cup coconut milk and a few shakes of powdered curry.
4. Cover and cook on low for about five minutes.

For breakfast this morning, hubby made No-Carb Coconut Biscuits (click here for recipe), with chopped (cooked) bacon and shredded cheese inside:

Trying new foods, part 2

I made sauteed kale the other day. I used the kitchen scissors to chop up a lot of kale, enough to fill the colander two times, and cooked it all in a big pot of salted water for about two minutes. Meanwhile, sauteed chopped onion and garlic in coconut oil in a big skillet. Drained the kale and added it to the skillet. Stirred in some salt, smoked paprika, and ground red pepper, and cooked for about two more minutes. It was very good. I based the method on recipes I found at recipezaar: