Chicken Vegetable Soup - PALEO

Disclaimer: I was home today... sick. I made this soup so everyone in my family would have something nourishing to eat since they are sick too. Translation: This recipe takes an hour but it's worth it :)

Do you ever have a half-eaten rotisserie chicken sitting in the fridge or am I all alone in this one? For me it usually starts when I bring one home from the store in the morning planning on using it for dinner (I'm usually making the big bowl of awesome yumminess. Check it out under salads)

When 5:00 rolls around and I go to the fridge to get my ingredients, I find my rotisserie chicken... The lid is mangled, the carton is ripped, the chicken looks like it's been attacked by a wild animal. It's clinging to life... hoping to be resuscitated. It's breasts are nowhere to be found and I'm left with two options. Starve or make dinner out of the underside of the chicken. The culprit who did this to my chicken shall remain nameless but let's just say he blew in at about noon, completely famished and went for it like it was the last supper. Ladies, if this happens to you on a regular basis you can solve the problem with a simple love note. Since we are an Italian household I prefer, "U toucha my chicken, I breaka u face". Just make sure it's displayed prominently to halt the meat hooks before it's too late.

So... as I was saying. I need to turn my half-masticated chicken into dinner. We happen to all be sick in this household right now so I think chicken, vegetable soup is in order.

What you'll need:

A rotisserie chicken, preferably with some meat still attached to it

veggies of your choice such as:

cabbage, carrot, broccoli, onion, bell pepper, etc.

1T Italian Seasoning

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2 bay leaves

a little salt if you want

What you do:

Pick the chicken clean of meat and set the meat aside. Get a big ol pot of water going on the stove and drop the chicken carcass in the water with the garlic and bay leaves. Boil the heck out of it for about 45 minutes adding water as necessary to keep the level up. While waiting for the stock to cook saute your veggies until they are crisp tender. Strain the stock with a fine sieve to get rid of the bones and other particles. Return the stock to the pot. TASTE. Does it need a little salt? Is the flavor of the stock too strong for you? If so add some water. If you are not used to homemade stock the flavor will be more intense than the flavor of boxed broth.

Add in the veggies, the chicken and the Italian seasoning and simmer about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Steak with Tomatoes and Feta - PRIMAL

My life has certainly changed since the beginning of this blog nine months ago. Back then I was a harried mother of two-year old twin boys with a heck of a lot on her plate and not enough time in the day to do it all. Wait... that sounds familiar...

The change has come around in the way of being a gym owner (my husband surprised me on my 40th birthday) and taking care of my mom who is very ill. Those two things have put me right over the top and headlong into crazy-land. Now is not the time to be disorganized... Alas, I am.

I'm not organized by nature. I struggle with it every day. I am a typical mother screaming down the freeway to the next appointment or play date. I am the mother who makes the grocery list and conveniently leaves it in my car or on the kitchen counter, not figuring this out until I'm elbow deep in the zucchini and I can't remember if I am out of tomato paste. I am the mother who has three inches of grey roots that desperately need to be covered but no time to do it, so I'm sure by now people are confusing me with a skunk.

For those reasons and many more, I decided to bring Primal Mama to semi-homemade status. I will still be including scratch recipes but they are going to be lightning fast. Some of my recipes won't be recipes at all. They will be about what you can pick up and throw together, because I know most of you out there feel me. We may have totally different backgrounds and lifestyles, but I know most of you are trying to fit 40 hours into 24.

This brings me to my next announcement:

Primal Mama is also going to include recipes that are, well... Primal.

Yes, that is right... I'm branching out big time. This may upset all of you Paleo diehards but if you look back on my recipes, many of them are not "pure". I will never give up my use of vinegar and truth be told I love and a desperately miss cheese. Now let me explain the fine print.

When I say cheese, I don't mean those nasty plastic filmed slices of yellow dye #17 mixed with corn syrup and gluten. This is what they lovingly refer to as "processed cheese food". What in the name of all things sane does that mean? First of all the word "processed" is displayed right on the front of the package. That's scary enough. They don't even attempt to hide it or call it something else like the case of Yogurt Bites marketed to children with "yogurty goodness" printed on the front and "contains no yogurt" printed so small you have to have the Hubble telescope to read it. Oh man, I've gone off on a tangent again. By this time you should be used to it.

I mean cheese... real cheese. 100% grass fed New Zealand cheddar (Trader Joe's) or raw cheese from US Wellness. I also love sheep's milk feta. The real stuff not the rubbery "Athenos" brand or the like. Real feta can be found at a Mediterranean market. If you live in the middle of "lilly white world" you may have to order it on line. And the bonus of good feta is... It's grass fed!

So you will see some recipes in the future that contain some cheese. I will label them with PRIMAL if the recipe contains cheese or vinegar or other dairy products. I will label the recipe PALEO if it fits in that category. For example:

PRIMAL RECIPE:

Steak with Roasted Tomato and Feta

What you need:

Grass Fed steak (I used Rib Eye)

A container of cherry tomatoes

1/4 to 1/2 cup awesome quality feta

olive oil

cracked black pepper

dried parsley

What you do:

Preheat oven to 400. Place the cherry tomatoes on a cookie sheet and drizzle olive oil over them. Roll them around the pan so they get coated in the oil. Sprinkle with black pepper. Put them in the oven and forget them for about 20 minutes. The tomatoes are done when most of them have popped and have a semi-deflated look. In the meantime grill up the steaks to your liking. If you are not a grill master, it is worth the money to buy a grill pan and cook them stove-top.

Plate the steak and put a scoop of cherry tomatoes on top. sprinkle with the feta and a little dried parsley for color.

Enjoy!

Primal Mama Goes Semi-Homemade

I know, I know, it's a big announcement. But I have to do it or this family is never going to eat again. Since becoming the proud new owner of Anaheim CrossFit my time for cooking has been whittled down to opening a bag of salad greens at about 9pm.

My poor husband. I lured him into marriage with my cooking. Every night I would cook no less than four courses of delicious and beautiful food complete with table setting. He would come home from work and the entire house smelled like the dish I was making. I even wore an apron... and make-up.

Exactly 20 months after we married all hell broke loose in our house. Yes, I am talking about the birth of our twins. Ever since that beautiful day in January of '08 our house has been utter madness. I remember thinking that things could not get anymore chaotic. Now I just laugh at those memories. The truth is that things have gotten more chaotic exponentially. Only now on most days I roll with the punches. Oh, who am I kidding...

I digress.

The point of this post is to announce that I will be offering many recipes from now on that are faster than fast. They will consist of things you can grab from the market and literally put together in a snap. Can you open a bag? Can you hold the handle of the knife while using the sharp end to cut? Then you can make these recipes!

So let's kick off with a little kabob and side salad that is beautiful and tasty. You can have dinner on the table in 10 minutes or less.

What you'll need:

premade kabobs from your local store (I like Sprouts)

a package of salad greens

a small packet of walnuts

a container of blackberries

a small container of strawberries

a small handful of dried cranberries (these contain sugar)

for the dressing:

equal parts of olive oil and lemon juice

What you do:

Preheat your broiler/grill pan and throw on the kabobs turning them every few minutes until cooked through. When you buy them from the butcher they can give you exact cooking times... just ask them!

While the kabobs are cooking, toss all of the ingredients for the salad together. All you have to do is open the containers, slice the strawberries in half and dump everything into a bowl. Whisk together the dressing.

Serve. Done.

This picture is from a restaurant where I had lunch with friends. It was my inspiration to recreate this meal in no time flat. Good luck!

Enjoy!

Italian Burgers with Marinara and Eggplant

Sometimes I absolutely love it when I screw up. Don't get me wrong, there's more times than not when I'm kicking myself for it. Like the one time that I waited six months to get my son in to see this "premiere" neurologist only to find that I left the house, got completely lost, didn't have the phone number and had an old address. That was no bueno. Or the time when I decided to go to my favorite ethnic grocery store deep in the heart of Anaheim on a Tuesday afternoon. Tuesdays are their "sale" days where you can actually save 1/2 a cent on their already rock bottom prices and it seems to bring out the entire populous of Southern California. Every cart was taken and I felt like Steven Segal in Under Siege trying to get to the cucumbers.



But let's get to the good screw ups. Like the time last year when my husband loaded my bar at CrossFit much heavier than I thought he did. I told him the weight I wanted and he upped it by 10 pounds. I finished the WOD without ever knowing and ended up doing "heavy Fran". I screwed up for not checking my weight, but came away with a sense of accomplishment I would have never allowed myself.



And now let's talk about the screw up that created this post. I've been making dinner in the morning the past week or so. It's the only time that I have to do it since my husband and I are now the proud owners of Anaheim CrossFit. Our partner coaches in the morning and we coach in the evening. Yes, the evening... right across dinner time. This leaves me with exactly zero time in my day to be disorganized or forget anything. Alas... last night, dinner was forgotten. I was scheduled to make my meatballs (the first recipe post on this blog). They are super yummy and cook in the crock pot so they are really easy. But the trick is that you have to remember to actually make them. Fail.



So I had the grass fed ground beef and Hot Italian Sausage defrosted. What in the world was I going to do with that? Pasta?... Not on your life. Then by divine Italian intervention, it came to me. I would make a version of nothing I had ever heard of.

What you'll need:

a pound of grass fed ground beef

a package of Hot Italian Sausage (I used pork)

a jar of Trader Joe's marinara (look for lowest sugar possible)

an eggplant (optional)

What you do:

Mix the ground beef and 4 links of sausage (casing removed) with your hands. Give it a good squish to really get it mixed well. Shape the meat into hamburger patties and set aside. Cut the eggplant into 1/4 inch slices that can be put on top of the burger. Brush the eggplant with oil and sprinkle with pepper. Grill the eggplant on a grill pan or saute it until it's soft and set aside.

While the eggplant is grilling, cook the burgers in a deep skillet until no longer pink in the center. Top each burger with a slice of grilled eggplant and then pour the Marinara sauce over each burger. Turn the flame down low until the dish heats through.

I knew that this was a keeper when I had to leave the kitchen to tend to my boys. When I returned the pan of six burgers had been reduced to four... sans eggplant. The lonely mutilated eggplant lay in the bottom of the skillet clinging to life. Mental note... husband despises eggplant. So except for the eggplant faux pas I got two thumbs up and no leftovers. I hope you enjoy this easy dish as much as we did... eggplant or not!

Mark Sisson is coming, Mark Sisson is coming!

Aloha and greetings from Hawaii! I am here enjoying a week with my sister's family, my family and my mom. It's been a very long time since all of us have been together under one roof (well, three condos really). We are having some great laughs by the pool, eating lots of yummy primal dishes and CrossFitting our hearts out at our friend Kimo's Place, CrossFit Hawaii. It's the greatest thing in the world to have my family by my side when we are doing a WOD. Even my little guys get into it. One of my twins can do overhead squats and burpees. Have you ever watched a toddler squat? It's a beautiful, flexible and fluid motion. And how they can hold it at the bottom endlessly with a perfectly straight back?... wow.

Anyway, shifting gears, my purpose for this quick note to you is to announce that Justin Flynn, owner of Orange Coast CrossFit, located in Costa Mesa, CA, is having Mark Sisson, of Mark's Daily Apple come on down and impart all of his wisdom in a talk held on Wednesday, August 18, at 6:00 pm. There are only 75 spots and it's about a third full within 24 hours of the announcement. One of the best things is it's affordable at $20.00 a head.

I am an avid follower of Mark Sisson. His advice is sound, he is steeped in the primal ways and at 50 plus years old, it is obvious that he practices what he preaches. His book, "The Primal Blueprint" is a wealth of information, easy to read and very entertaining while getting the point across. He also has a new cookbook out that I'm anxious to check out.

If you are anywhere in the area and you can get to this seminar, I highly recommend it. So come on down to Orange Coast CrossFit, say hi to me and soak up all the info that Mark Sisson has to offer. You will leave enlightened!

Chicken with sun dried tomato and onion relish

Many of my recipes are accidentally on purpose. Now you're thinking... "What exactly does that mean?" Well, what it means is that I haven't grocery shopped in more than a week and the ratio of food to laundry in my house is way out of proportion. If only the fridge were as full as the laundry basket we'd be in recipe makin' heaven! But alas, that is not the case... not even close.





I've managed to actually defrost some chicken so that's a start. I open my refrigerator to find the usual... A tumble weed rolling by, an old cow skull, the theme song from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly plays in my head as I stare down the last onion. (Gosh I love Clint Eastwood). Fortunately this time around it's a blessing to be limited on time and ingredients in the kitchen.





I pull out my trusty jar of sun dried tomatoes, a lonely purple onion, some olive oil and a smattering of pine nuts that I've found in the depths of my freezer. Good enough for me! Let's make some chicken.

What you'll need:

All of the above ingredients, plus boneless chicken breasts, garlic powder and pepper

What you do:

Start of by marveling at the lack of ingredients in this dish. Remember that feeling as you take you first bite and are shocked by the wonderful flavor. It can't be this good and this easy... can it?

Slice your raw chicken breasts in half horizontally and pound the thicker side down a bit so the chicken breast is an even thickness. Give it a sprinkle of garlic powder and ground black pepper on both sides. Get a pan nice and hot with a swirl of oil and lay the chicken breasts (two at a time... don't crowd the pan or the temperature will drop and you will have "steamed chicken"...ewww). Cook for about 3 - 4 minutes per side and remove to a plate. While the chicken cooks dice up the onion and cut about 7 large pieces of sun dried tomato into strips. You'll also need about 1/4 cup of pine nuts. Tent the chicken with foil to keep warm.

In the same pan, add a little more oil and drop in your onion. Saute it until its nice and soft. Add in the tomato and give it a stir for a minute. Lastly, stir in the pine nuts, lower the heat and keep stirring until the pine nuts brown. You can go from brown to burnt really fast here so pay attention!

Place the chicken on a plate and top with the sun dried tomato and onion relish. It looks very gourmet when you are done so don't let our little secret out!

Enjoy!

Emergency Dinner - Broccoli Chicken

Most of you know already that I am an extremely busy, overtaxed, slightly neurotic mother of four. Two grown daughters, and twin boys that are now 2 1/2. My oldest daughter is turning 21 in a couple of weeks, my youngest daughter just graduated from high school and my boys... Well, my boys continue to try to snuff the life out of me on a daily basis. I think they may be succeeding. Sometimes I take a step back, look at myself in the mirror and laugh hysterically. What in the world was I thinking having more children at 40? I am really starting to think that women have a built in "forget" mechanism that blocks out our children's ages at 18 months - 4 years and ages 13 -17. We have to. Otherwise there would be no children on this earth. So I'm smack dab in the middle of the 18 months - 4 years category. But this time around I have been blessed with two "full steam ahead" maniacs at once. Those of you that have boys are nodding in agreement right about now.





Between the screaming and the throwing of objects, the constant protests, the refusals to nap even when their eyes are practically rolling back in their heads; the demands for "more juice!" (it's 90% water... don't get all freaky on me), the eating of rocks, prying my son's mouth open only to find "wings and legs" and the obligatory wail for having a toy snatched out of tiny hands followed by the retaliation bite and conquer, I guess I'm right where I should be... staring down the double barrel of toddlerhood at point blank range... and I think I'm out matched. Don't get me wrong. I love my kids. (when they're sleeping). :) So with my flack jacket, my toddler mace, my helmet and an occasional glass of wine, I spurn on.





I think you can actually hear the theme song from Barnum and Bailey's Circus when you walk through the front door of my house. It is a literal circus combined with a zoo and a war zone most days. Not only are the kids at a tough age but the dishes in the sink are having little dish babies right before my eyes and the laundry looks like the blob oozing out the top and spilling over the side of the basket. Seriously! We only have four people living in this house and two of them are under three feet tall. How can there be so much laundry?





So in between my usual duties: nurse maid, referee, diaper changer, taxi, nurturer, boo boo fixer, good cop/bad cop, facilitator, house keeper and physical education coordinator (not to mention jungle gym and pillow) I also have to find time to cook. Well, lately I haven't had any. So today I am happy to bring you my latest emergency dinner.

What you'll need:

A rotisserie chicken

broccoli florets

olive oil or oil of your choice

for the sauce:

5T wheat free soy sauce (I apologize to the paleo gods, but I'm not giving it up)

2tsp sesame oil

2T rice wine vinegar, no sugar, no salt version

1tsp garlic powder

1tsp ginger

1tsp honey, optional

black sesame seeds for garnish

nuts: almonds or cashews... or which ever you like

What you do:

Start by whisking up the sauce. If you are using more than half of the chicken or if you like a stronger flavor (like me), double the sauce recipe. Debone and cube up the rotisserie chicken and put it in a bowl. Poor the sauce over the chicken and let it take a little swim. Take out a large pan and get it nice and hot with your oil. Next place the raw broccoli in the pan and stir-fry it for about 3 minutes. It won't be cooked through so here's what you do next. Take a 1/3 cup of water (or chicken broth if you want to get all fancy) and poor it in. BEFORE YOU START: Have the lid to the pan in the other hand. Quickly poor in the water and cover the broccoli with the lid. Now you are steaming the broccoli but it will still have a "pan fried" taste. Take the lid off when all the water is absorbed. Stir in the chicken and heat it through.

Plate this beauty and sprinkle with black sesame seeds and a palm full of chopped nuts.

Enjoy!