Sweet Potato Salad

Some things just don't have priority right now... this blog is one of them. But since I've fled the house of wrestling boys for a few minutes of quiet in the garage while the chicken for the week is cooking, I thought I'd share this yummy sweet potato salad I came up with a couple weeks ago. 

Sweet potatoes. You either love 'em or hate 'em.  I love 'em!  Whatever you'd use a potato to make you can make a more flavorful (and healthier) version of with sweet potatoes.  Granted, they are sweet.  So if you don't want sweet, you don't want sweet potatoes.  I have absolutely nothing against sweet!

Potato salad (home made) is one of my favorite comfort foods.  And, like iced tea, if it's not made well, it can be disgusting.  The stuff you buy in the store they call potato salad I call yuck.  The homemade potato salad that my grandmother makes is so good you can't wait for the potatoes to cool down to eat it!  That's how I feel about this sweet potato salad.

Sweet Potato Salad

1/2 package of uncured hickory smoked bacon cooked till crispy and coarsely chopped
6 medium sized sweet potatoes washed and diced into about 1 inch chunks, skin on
4 boiled eggs
1 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/2 sweet onion chopped finely
2 T. mustard
1/2 c. paleo mayo (or your favorite mayo if you could care less about paleo)


Boil the sweet potatoes in salted water until cooked through but not mushy... about 15 minutes.  Drain and set aside in large mixing bowl.  Chop 4 cooled hard boiled eggs and add to mixing bowl.  Add crispy, chopped bacon and onion to mixing bowl.  Add celery seed, celery salt, mustard and mayo.  Mix with large spoon until well mixed.  Refrigerate, or if you just can't stand it like me, serve up a bowl and eat it warm!

Enjoy!

Sheila

Throw together salad

Sometimes you just have to start throwing stuff together, or rather, sometimes you just have to start throwing FOOD together.

These last few weeks I've been very inconsistent with the effort it takes to eat and feed my family a clean diet.  You can't fall off the planning bandwagon.  Period.  Plan, prepare and then repeat.  But in real life there are times when you haven't planned and haven't prepared and that's when, if you have some spare fruit and veggies, vinegar, honey, oil and spices laying around, you may be on the verge of a very yummy throw-together meal!

I literally grabbed every fruit and vegetable I had left in the fridge and stuck it on the counter and decided to make a salad out of it.  There were some leftover broiled chicken tenders in the fridge that just happened to work out perfect for adding protein to the salad.  Here's what I came up with:

Throw-together salad

2 broccoli crowns cut into small pieces
2 cups fresh baby spinach coarsely chopped
1/4 chopped red onion
1/2 cup crushed cashew pieces
1/2 cup golden raisins
about 6 strawberries sliced
6 diced leftover broiled chicken tenders

Vinaigrette:

1/2 c. apple cider vinegar
2 T. honey
1/2 t. poppy seeds
1/2 t. ground ginger
1/4 t. sea salt
1/2 c. light olive oil

Put all the chopped veggies, fruit and nuts in a large bowl.  In separate bowl whisk vinaigrette ingredients together.  Pour over salad mix and mix well.  Add chicken and mix well.

Enjoy!

Getting back and Tuna Salad

Well, I fell off the real-food bandwagon.  Actually, that's not true.  I got off the bandwagon at the stop marked convenience and chocolate.

If you live in suburbia and work full time and try to eat and feed your family a clean, real-food diet, there's no time to stop planning and preparing.  If you don't cook you don't eat.  Or you end up eating S.Y.C.E (somthing you can eat) rather than real food.  I got tired of planning and preparing after our long stent with some nasty respiratory infection and went to Chic-Fil-A, had pizza, cake, ice cream... I gave up.

The good news is, I'm back.  The bad news is, my body hurts.  I guess that's good news too in a way.  At least now I know for sure all that yummy stuff I can eat is actually causing me physical pain.  It's not just a coincidence that within hours of eating all that junk my hands were swollen and my belly felt like a volcano about to erupt.  The next morning my body felt like I had been hit by a truck.  And after a week of eating like that I now have worse pain in my arthritic left knee.

So bye bye sugar, processed food and flours and hello planning, preparation, meat and veggies!  It's Whole30 time round 2.

To get back on track I've been eating dates like crazy today, trying to ward off my craving for the leftover chocolate birthday cake in my fridge.  Dates + almond butter= God's Snickers Bar.

Tonight we had Tuna Salad with homemade mayo on a bed of cole slaw.  It's one of our favorite quick meals.     Even the kids like this one:

One can albacore tuna
3 T. homemade mayo
1/2 ripe avocado
plate full of cole slaw mixed with homemade mayo and your favorite spices

Mix a bag of pre-made cole slaw mix (get it from the bagged salad section in the supermarket) or 6 cups of shredded cabbage and carrots with about 1/2 c. of homemade mayo.  I added an additional tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, celery seed, paprika and salt and pepper to the slaw and mixed well.

Drain canned tuna of all water.  Mix well with 3 T. of homemade mayo.  Add in diced sweet onion and tomatoes if you like (I like, but my husband prefers just tuna please).  Place a half of a ripened avocado (with the seed removed) on the bed of cole slaw.  Scoop a large spoonful or ice cream scoop full of tuna salad mixture into the avocado.  Sprinkle with pepper or paprika or chopped cilantro and enjoy!

Valentine's Chicken Meatball Soup- 2 Versions

My son has been coming to work with me the past two days.  He has pink eye.  Being a school nurse has its advantages when you have school aged children.  The pink-eyed son of a school nurse who hasn't yet finished 24 hours of antibiotics and therefore can't return to school can come to school with his mom and be quarantined in the back office with his books and his mom's kindle and her laptop and snacks and a water jug and pop out once every couple hours to use the bathroom and mom doesn't have to take a day off work and leave her school secretaries without a nurse to care for the various needs of the day.  It works out good for the nurse-mom and the school kids and staff she works with, but not so well for the nurse-mom's kid.  I think he called it a dungeon. 

While he was in his dungeon I saw so many sick kids, with pink eye and puking and fevers and headaches, and more pink eye, by the time we left and came home all I wanted was some simple, light chicken soup.  My son wanted some Valentine's fun since he missed out on all his school celebrations today.

So we swung by Sprouts on the way home and picked up some ingredients for our need-for-heal-soup/Valentine's day fun dinner.

Some women I know feel alive in a craft store.  I feel alive in the produce and meat isle of a grocery store!  I walk around looking at various fruits and vegetables and meats and recipe ideas start coming to me.  By the time I walked out of Sprouts today I had the makings for a variation on Italian wedding soup and the makings for homemade chocolate hot fudge to dip some apples in (We wanted strawberries but there were none!  I know!  No strawberries on Valentine's day?).

I loved the soup I came up with. But my best critics:  my husband and children (also the most loyal fans of my cooking) said it was bland.  Maybe bland is what my tired-of-breathing-in viruses stomach was looking for, hence why it hit the spot for me.  But for them it was less than thrilling.  So I used the leftover meatball mix to make a variation, a Mexican wedding soup variation.  That one was a hit with my husband, "Now this I could eat all day!" 

So you pick, Simple and Soothing or Ooo La La Deliciosa!

Simple and Soothing Valentine's Chicken Meatball Soup

1/4 c. coconut oil
1/2 sweet onion chopped
2 lbs ground chicken
4 cloves fresh minced garlic
2 eggs
1 t. sea salt
1 T. dry basil
1/2 c. fresh chopped parsley
1 c. fresh chopped spinach
1 t. ground thyme
1/2 c. unsweetened coconut flakes
1/2 c. almond meal
64 oz. chicken broth

In a large pot melt coconut oil over medium heat. Saute onion until translucent.  While onion is cooking, mix the ground chicken,  garlic, eggs, salt, basil, parsley, spinach, thyme, coconut flakes and almond meal in a large bowl until well mixed.  Mixture will be moist but will hold together.  Form into cherry sized (approx. 1/2 inch) rough balls.  (I only used about half the meat mixture to make the meatballs.  The other half I used in the Mexican version below.)

Add chicken broth to cooked onions in large pot.  Bring to a rolling boil.  Drop meatballs into boiling broth.  Cook for about 5 minutes or until the meatballs all float to the surface.  Serve with a little salt and pepper to taste.


Ooo La La Deliciosa version

Meat mixture from the recipe above
3 T. olive oil
1 sweet potato thinly sliced
1 t. paprika
1 t. chipotle
2 t. garlic powder
1 t. salt
pepper to taste
chopped fresh cilantro
diced avocado

Brown cherry sized meatballs using the meat mixture above in about 3 T. olive oil over medium heat.  Sprinkle meat with spices.  Cook until lightly browned but not cooked through.  Add 16 oz. vegetable broth and 2 cups of water.  Bring to a rolling boil.  Add thin sweet potato slices.  Turn heat down and simmer for 10 minutes or until sweet potatoes break apart easily. 

Serve topped with chopped cilantro and fresh diced avocado.

Enjoy!


P.S.  Here are the broths I used.  They're the only one's I've found that don't contain sugar and other unpronounceable ingredients.  I'm sure making your own broth would be the way to go, but this school-nurse mom doesn't have enough time in a day for that.  Maybe someday.

Ginger-Sesame Chicken

12 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
approx 1 inch section of fresh ginger root, peeled
5 cloves of garlic
1/4 c. sesame seeds
5 pitted medjool dates
1/2 c. apple cider vinegar
3 T. sesame oil
1/2 c. olive oil
1 tsp. sea salt
3 T. water
1/2 c. salted cashews
3 T. olive oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In food processor blend blend ginger root, garlic, sesame seeds and medjool dates until forms a well blended paste.  While blending, pour in apple cider vinegar and sesame oil.  Slowly add olive oil until all ingredients are incorporated and sauce is a applesauce consistency.  Add sea salt and water and blend for a few more seconds.  Pour sauce out into a separate bowl.

Remove 1/2 cup of the sauce mixture at this stage to use as a marinade for the chicken. Put the chicken thighs in a gallon size freezer bag and add the 1/2 cup of sauce.  Mix the chicken and the sauce up good and let it marinade in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before cooking.

Use the food processor to blend cashews and olive oil into a paste.  After you reach a paste consistency, pour the sauce that was set aside earlier back into the food processor with the cashew paste.  Blend until well incorporated.  Sauce will be a applesauce consistency.

Place marinated chicken thighs in a casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees for one hour.  Sprinkle chicken with sesame seeds and allow to brown under broil for a few more minutes or until the sesame seeds begin to brown.

Serve with cole slaw or Asian cucumber salad and a side of sweet potato spears.

This one was a big hit with the kids!

Enjoy!

Caldo de Pollo

So it's 50 degrees in the sunny Phoenix valley this February and I feel like I'm living in the tundra.  That's what happens when you get used to thinking of "cool" as anything less than 80 degrees and "hot" as anything above 110 degrees.  But I like winter and cold.  It makes me want to curl up with a warm pair of fuzzy socks, drink a hot mocha and read a good book.  It also makes me want to make homemade soup.

When I started on this real-food journey I really didn't think there would be much of a difference from what I was already eating.  I found out that there area secret hiding places for sugar, like chicken broth.  Not one can or box of chicken broth has, hello, CHICKEN BROTH, in it!  It has a bunch of things I can't read plus sugar.  I mean come on!  It can't be that hard to make a preservable canned chicken broth with really homemade ingredients, right?  Well, apparently it is or something cause there's no such thing as a sugar-free chicken broth.  I might need to start canning my own.  But, I did find organic vegetable broth that has, wait for it, vegetables and salt in it.  Phew!

Ok, so when trying to live paleo or whole30 or.... I'm gonna call it real- when trying to live a real-food lifestyle watch out for sugar hiding places.

I have several Hispanic friends at work.  My sweet friend Mrs. Irma, she's the one who taught me about Caldo after we ate it at work.  I was hooked.  I was like, "I'm going home and making this tonight!"  It's yum and more yum!   Now I'm making it without the sugar and preservative-laden "chicken broth."  It's just as much a winter-weather comfort food as it was before!

Caldo De Pollo

1 cut up fryer or 6 chicken thighs (preferably bone-in)
2 T. olive oil
1/2 sweet onion
5 garlic cloves crushed and diced
1 jalapeno diced
2 yellow squash coarsely chopped
1 chayote (Mexican squash) or 2 zucchini coarsely chopped
1/2 green cabbage coarsely chopped
1 cup baby carrots halved
6 cups organic vegetable broth (or even better a homemade chicken stock or broth)
handful of chopped cilantro
juice from a lime
diced avocado
salt and pepper to taste
chipotle chile powder to taste

In large pot cook diced onion in olive oil until transparent.  Add chicken fryer and garlic to pot, cover with chicken or vegetable broth, bring to a low boil, cover, reduce heat and simmer for an hour or two or until chicken falls apart easily when lifted from broth.  Remove chicken from broth, let cool until you can handle it.  Add chopped jalapeno, yellow squash, chayote or zucchini and baby carrots.  Simmer on low heat until carrots are tender... about 30 minutes. Add cabbage, simmer for another 10 minutes.   Add chicken meat pulled from bones of boiled fryer.  Serve with chopped, fresh cilantro, diced avocado and a squeeze of lime juice.  Add salt, pepper and chipotle to taste.  Enjoy!

My coconut milk test kitchen

My kitchen is fast becoming a coconut milk test kitchen.  Most of the dishes I've been trying involve coconut milk.

I made coconut milk coffee creamer using this recipe from Fast Paleo.  I added a teaspoon of coconut oil and 5 dates instead of 3-4.  I like it.  My guy doesn't like spicy coffee drinks (a.k.a pumpkin spice latte) so although I wanted to try adding some canned pumpkin and spices to the mix, I didn't.  But to my own cup I added a teaspoon of honey and a dash of nutmeg.  Next batch I'll make with the canned pumpkin.

This recipe qualifies as Whole30 if you don't add honey to your cup like I did.  But if you're a Paleo disciple then add the honey and enjoy!

I love it that your average cup of good, black coffee become a nutrient-dense, superfood dish when you use this "creamer" too.  I love real food!  It tastes good and it is good.

 

 

Last night I made this chicken bacon alfredo from PaleOMG.   I used leftover chicken patties I had made using a modified version of this recipe and butternut squash instead of delicata squash (I couldn't find any at Sprouts).  It turned out delish!