Recently, I wanted a treat for dessert. I knew that mug cakes were quick and easy and I wouldn't have to turn on the oven on a hot summer night. I did a Google search for Paleo Mug Cake and found this recipe. I looked at that recipe and realized that it did look good, but I thought I knew how to make it a better paleo mug cake.
Just make sure you have a big enough mug!
Now let me warn you, as mug cakes go, this is a pretty labor intensive recipe. For most mug cakes, you just throw everything in a mug, give it a stir and pop it in the microwave. This recipe has two cooking cycles and you have to add ingredients in a sequence. But don't let that deter you; its still far easier than making a cake and having to warm up an oven.
Melt 3 tablespoons chocolate chips and coconut oil in the microwave in a mug. I will set my microwave to 70% power and microwave for 20 secs and stir, multiple times. This way, I get a good melt, but without burning them. Plus, sometimes chocolate chips hold their shape even though they are melted.
Stir the coconut flour, espresso and baking soda into the melted chocolate. Then add the egg and mix it well - if you don't, you'll be left with little worm like strings of egg white in your cake, which is kind of weird.
Add the remaining chocolate chips for little fudge-like nuggets in your cake. This step can be omitted, it makes for a pretty rich cake, especially if you use dark chocolate.
Cook it all in the microwave for about a minute and a half. It should be dry when tested with a toothpick. Let it cool a bit and enjoy.
The first month of the new year has wrapped up. Maybe you set the goal to eat healthier in 2015 and after a month, the idea is getting a bit stale or hard to maintain. Maybe you just finished the Whole 30 and are thinking about how to make some of those healthy eating changes stick. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to keep your new morning routine of working out and still get to work on time. I'll show you how easy it is to poach eggs - so easy you can do it at work.
I'm excited to be working with NestFresh, a producer of cage free eggs. On top of having plenty of room for their egg layers, NestFresh uses a network of smaller, family run farms across the US, getting you the freshest eggs. Since eggs are such a great food, I'll be writing a few posts over the next few months about how to cook eggs - there are so many ways to go beyond scrambled and fried!
And if you looked carefully at that picture above, you'll notice it is on a paper plate. I made that egg at the office!
Eggs are a healthy ingredient, loaded with vitamins and nutrients and a great source of protein. If you eat Paleo, they're a low-cost, clean, nutrient dense food, as opposed to other clean, protein sources.
Over the years, I've always viewed poached eggs as special, sort of a rarity. You have to be at a certain class of restaurant to see them on the menu, often as Eggs Benedict. Your local greasy spoon probably doesn't serve them, and if it does, your local diner probably isn't very greasy.
I will often make poached eggs on those special brunch holidays, like Easter or Mother's Day, and it is almost always for Eggs Benedict or replacing the Canadian Bacon with smoked salmon (rapidly becoming my preference). I've got inserts to cook them in a sauce pan, a special pan with poaching cups and have learned the great method to cook them just in a pot of water. Like making eggs any style, it is pretty easy, but it takes either some preparation or attention or some gadget to poach them.
But I've learned to make poached eggs in the microwave.
Ingredients and Equipment
1 or 2 eggs
Small, microwaveable container 2 - 3 cups in size
Water
Steps
Fill the container approximately 2/3 full with body temperature water. I use my finger to assess the temperature and want it feeling neither hot nor cold. Poaching in the microwave is very sensitive to the initial water temperature - beware if one of your office mates was washing their coffee cup right before you fill your container.
I've also found that the shape of the container is important, the transition between the sides should be curved, not a 90 degree angle (like in many take away soup containers).
Crack your eggs into the water and cover with a paper towel. While I've never had a yolk explode on me, I've had pockets in the white pop which makes quite a mess on the inside of the microwave. The curved corned in the container help prevent those pockets. Just cover it - you don't want to be the person who makes a mess in the office microwave.
Put the covered container in the microwave and cook on high. This step will take some experimentation, depending upon the size of your container, the number of eggs and the power of your microwave. In the picture below, I'm cooking two eggs in a 1000 watt microwave - it takes about 3 minutes. When I'm using a 1200 watt microwave and only cooking one egg, it takes about 65 seconds.
As you try this with your microwave, remember, its far easier to add more time and cook it longer, rather than to un-cook the egg. And once the egg nears being done, 5 to 10 seconds can make the difference between runny yolks and solid yolks.
Take the eggs out of the microwave and test for doneness. They white should be firm and the yolk should still be soft to the touch. I've never found that the water is too hot for me to use my finger to make this check. If they're not done, put them in for a little more time.
\
Carefully drain the water from the container. You'll want to do this promptly, because the egg continues to cook in the hot water. The egg will barely stick to the container, so I often use a fork as the filter to hold my egg back and let the water flow out. You're so close, you don't want to lose the egg down the drain at this point!
Transfer the egg to your breakfast plate, with some clean sausage or bacon and my favorite, mashed sweet potatoes. Season as you see fit (I've not yet brought a salt and pepper shaker or Sriracha to work yet) and enjoy.
Once you work out the specifics for your microwave and bowl you are using, this is very simple to do. I take my eggs with me to work in the morning and a container of pre-cooked sausage and smashed sweet potatoes and make breakfast at work. Invariably, I'll get comments about what a great breakfast or on the days I bring a few slices of bacon to microwave there, how great it smells. It beats out everybody else's instant oatmeal or cinnamon roll that they are warming up.
There is a slight downside that I must warn you about. Poaching eggs in the microwave, or in a pot for that matter, is really easy and you might just start doing it every day. The cachet of a poached egg might wear off a bit, but you'll be getting a healthy, delicious breakfast.
Note: I was compensated this post, but this is the way I make my breakfast almost everyday. All opinions are my own.
Over the years, I've developed a taste for whisky. I've figured out where my tastes lie in Scotch (The McCallan from the Scottish Highlands) but I've also had to more closely manage my budget. There has been a re-birth of whiskey in the United States and I've begun to explore different bourbons. Some of them are quite good and a great price point too.
This fall, I was at a social gathering sponsored by Farmstr, a local Seattle start up connecting farmers and consumers. You can buy a flat of brussels sprouts or an organic, free-range chicken directly from the farmer and pick it up at a convenient Seattle location.
At this gathering of food bloggers, there was a delightful cider punch. It wasn't cloyingly sweet and there was a delicate hint of cloves and you could feel the warmth of the alcohol trailing on your throat. It was a very nice, subtle way to enjoy the flavors of fall and winter.
I asked the chef for the recipe (cider, bourbon and homemade clove bitters) but didn't get the ratios. And on top of that, I'm not quite cool enough to have clove bitters nor have I gotten into making bitters, but my browser search history was full of "how to make bitters" searches.
While it doesn't seem too hard to make bitters, I decided to experiment and see if I could make a similar libation with ingredients around the house.
I started by infusing some apple cider with cloves and reduced it a bit, because I was side tracked by a family card game. Then, I tried adding some bourbon until I found a nice balance of sweetness. While I made it as a drink for one, this could easily be served as a punch as it was at the Farmstr party.
So, I've noticed something else about drinking bourbon. I don't drink very much, maybe one alcoholic drink a week, but everytime I've had a bourbon drink with a particular brand of bourbon, I just cannot sleep. Its almost like when you have a strong coffee too late in the day and it keeps you awake. I've not noticed this with all bourbon brands and never with any other alcohol. Does this happen to anyone else?
Bourbon and Clove Cider Cocktail
Ingredients
Apple Cider, 1 cup (I used filtered because that was all my son could find when he was on the grocery run)
8 whole cloves
Bourbon
Directions
Infuse the cider with the cloves. Break the cloves in half and add to the cider in a pot on medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and let it simmer for approximately 10 minutes or reduced to about 3/4 cup. More reducing will bring out the sweetness of the apples and the cloves.
Filter the infused cider and cool. Or do it in the opposite order. Store it in a closed container in the fridge, maybe a mason jar for some extra hipster points.
When you're ready for a drink, pour 3 shots of clove infused cider and 1 shot of bourbon in an old fashioned glass and enjoy. I didn't add ice because the cider was cool from the fridge and I prefer my dark alcohol drinks neat.
Saturday, Macy's in Alderwood Mall hosted the Culinary Council's Grilling Guru's semi-finals. Three west coast home cooks brought their grilling best and were judged by local chef Tom Douglas. I had front row seats to watch the grilling, taste the dishes and even get samples cooked by Tom Douglas himself!
The Culinary Council is comprised of some of the nations culinary masters. Tom Douglas represents Seattle and the Northwest, with the aim of teaching Macy's customers to cook and shop like master chefs. I like this way of thinking and I try to embody that in all of my cooking endeavors.
The Northwest Region was represented by three grilling gurus, Jack Scalfani from California, Margee Berry from Washington and Edwina Gadsby from Idaho. Jack hosts a popular YouTube channel, Cooking With Jack. His rib recipe and techniques were passed down from his Mom. Margee has been competing in food cook offs for over thirty years and her shrimp taco recipe was her own invention. Edwina has gone head to head with Margee several times over the years and taste tests her recipes on her husband and the bad ones end up on the dog's plate. Good recipe or not, they're both lucky guys. The winning recipe is posted at the end...
The competitors had 1 hour to grill their dishes for Tom Douglas and with a '3, 2, 1 Go!' they were off. The grills were hot, the sun was hot, but none of the cooks showed any nervousness. To keep the audience entertained while the grilling was going on, KOMO 4's Seth Wayne hosted giveaways of The Dahila Bakery Cookbook and Q&A's with Tom Douglas.
While watching the competitors cooking, Tom and his crew whetted our appetites with some of his grilling. A big gulf shrimp with a kalamata olive and some beautiful planked salmon kept the audience at bay when the wind shifted just a bit and we could smell the deliciousness from the grills.
Tom didn't fail to entertain either. In his usual funny fashion, he joked about how far north he was from his South Lake Union restaurant domain saying, "I'm so far North, I might as well be in Canada!" In addition to his funny commentary, he shared some valuable and interesting cooking tips.
Too much oil when grilling can lead to soot. Grill marks are good, but soot is not.
Grilled avocado is a hot thing in restaurants these days.
I've made milk shakes from avocados, but I'd never thought of grilling them. The soft texture doesn't seem like it would take to grilling well. It even got a rise from my Twitter followers.
It's worth giving it a try, especially since many of the avocados we buy need some additional time to ripen.
The competitors all finished before the allotted time and plated their food for Tom. It seemed like the Jack's ribs were going to win, but the perfectly cooked salmon for the noodle salad was the ultimate winner. I'll agree, grilling salmon is a little bit on the challenging side, getting it to that just cooked all the way through, still slightly translucent in the center, Edwina nailed it.
There were five other semi-final events like this taking place across the United States. As the Northwest's winner, Edwina is on her way to New York City, to compete in the Culinary Council's Sizzle Showdown on June 28th. She'll be judged by Chefs Johnny Iuzzuni and Todd English, competing for a $10,000 Grand Prize. Wish her luck!
The Winning Recipe
Grilled Sweet Chili Salmon Noodle Salad
Recipe compliments of Edwina G of Hayden, Idaho
Disclaimer: I am a member of the Everywhere Society and Everywhere has provided me with compensation for this post about Macy’s Culinary Council. However, all thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own.
My wife is attending the Disney Social Media Mom's conference this week; she left on Wednesday. The youngest two kids are on spring break and at Disneyland too, and on Friday, their brother joined them.
Heather went to Costco on Monday and bought a big container of strawberries, so its just me and a bunch of strawberries that need to be eaten before they spoil. Usually, in our house of five, with snacks and school lunches, the strawberries would just disappear. But with only two of us for half of the week, our consumption rate slowed significantly.
But I came up with a simple and quick way to make a strawberry smoothie!
I don't like watered down drinks and so a smoothie with ice just isn't as smooth, but sliced strawberries freeze quickly and provide that cold iciness and a banana provides the smoothness.
They don't look it from this picture, but those are frozen strawberries. I cored them and then sliced them, just before we sat down and they froze while we ate dinner. The banana was in the freezer too, but they take a little longer to freeze - at least it was cold when I threw it in the blender.
I used some almond milk for liquid, but coconut milk would probably be a good choice too. Or if you're feeling really like clean eating, make your own almond milk.
Quick Strawberry Banana Smoothie
Makes about 2 16 ounce glasses
Ingredients
2 good handfuls of strawberries
1 banana
dash of vanilla extract
about 1 cup almond milk
Instructions
Wash, core and slice the strawberries. Arrange on a plate and put in the freezer.
Put a banana in the freezer.
Let them freeze for 15 - 30 minutes.
Once you're ready, scrape the strawberries into your blender.
Peel and slice the banana in 1/2" slices into the blender.
Add a dash of vanilla extract and about 1 cup of almond milk.
A few weeks ago, I saw a picture on Instagram of cold brew coffee and homemade almond milk. I wish I remembered exactly which picture, but it was a beautiful picture and really made me want to drink it. It was also in the middle of the Whole Life Challenge and I'd drank nothing water, coffee and the occasional tea for about 4 weeks, so that added to the temptation. And it must have been quite a good picture, because it was pretty cold here in Seattle.
So, for the next few days, my Google searches were about how to make almond milk. It is surprisingly easy! And aside from some inactive soaking time, it is really quick.
All you need is a nut milk bag, available on Amazon for $7-10 and something to soak the nuts in. It's basically a really fine mesh filter bag.
There are lots of almond milk recipes on the internet; they seem to vary in how much water you add to the nut milk after soaking and what kind of sweetener if any. My wife's aunt changes out the water while the nuts are soaking. Some people use a food processor and some use a blender. But basically, its the same.
I've only tried sweetening my almond milk with honey and stevia and though I'm not a fan of stevia, the stevia was a better choice. But most of it, I drank unsweetened. It was nice to bring a small container to work and have that with my breakfast.
But best of all, its clean - no fake stuff, no chemical additives. Just nuts and water. Because it doesn't have the additives, it needs to be shaken before drinking and might not be as thick as commercial almond milk. On my next batch, I'm going to try to add some coconut milk. It might add some sweetness and give it a thicker mouth feel.
On the downside, its not cheaper than the commercial stuff, at least for me to make it. With my nut supply and water ratio, it costs me about double what I can pay in the grocery store. I get just over a pint with 1 cup of nuts and I don't have a cheaper nut supply than Costco. My wife's aunt, she has almond trees in her yard. It'll be pretty low cost for her. This is the trade off for eating clean though. Having raw nuts does give you some flexibility though, I was roasting nuts with all kinds of different seasonings and making milk. You can't do that with your container of roasted nuts!
Homemade Almond Milk
makes about 2 cups
Ingredients
1 cup raw almonds
water to cover nuts while soaking
2 cups water for blending
Something to sweeten the milk, optional. This could be stevia, honey, maple syrup, vanilla extract or ...
Directions
Put the nuts in a container, cover with water and let soak for 24 - 48 hours. Change the water occasionally. The nuts will swell some. The longer you soak, the creamier the milk will be.
After soaking, drain the nuts and place the nuts in a blender with 2 cups of fresh water.
Blend the heck out of the nuts on the blender's highest speed. You want everything to be a relatively homogeneous slurry. It'll take a few minutes.
Filter the nut milk through the nut milk bag into a container. Squeeze the bag and get as much of the milk out as you can. This is your finished product. Some bags are designed to hang and let gravity do the work, but this part only takes a few minutes of squeezing.
Mix in your sweetener, if you choose to be a little sweeter.
Store your milk, covered, in the refrigerator. I'm told it will keep for a week, but I've never had enough to last that long!
I'm participating in the Whole Life Challenge and because I chose the advanced nutrition rules, my occasional dark chocolate for dessert is out. But dates are a wonderful, wholesome, sweet snack and can make a delightful dessert.
A co-worker mentioned that he ate this at a Seattle restaurant and he and his wife made them when they were on a Whole 30 challenge. I had a 2 pound box of dates from Costco and a sampler of Oregon Olive Mill oil, so I decided to make them myself. Its not hard, only takes a few minutes and really showcases the ingredients. For this recipe, use the best quality oil and salt that you have, it will really make everything pop.
Oregon Olive Mill grows olives in the Willamette Valley on a fourth generation farm. They harvest their own olives and them mill them in their own mill. They have 13,000 trees that grow 3 varieties of olives making a top quality extra virgin olive oil. Each variety yields an oil with a different taste, mouth feel and importantly, an after taste. For this recipe, I used the Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive oil, because it had the most robust taste.
I used San Juan Island Sea Salt, a local Pacific North-West manufacturer of sea salt from our very own Salish Sea. I got a sample of this salt at the International Food Blogger's Conference and it is a favorite of mine. The salt has a brighter, crisper flavor than the french sea salts and is in much finer crystals than the Tibetan pink salt. When I'm finishing something and want to taste the salt, this is the one I use.
I think that having a tasting party of olive oils, salts, wine, whisky or chocolate would be a pretty cool thing to do. Not all at once, but maybe a series of parties. Hmm, ideas...
Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt
less than 10 minutes Ingredients
1-1/2 Tablespoon of your best olive oil
3 - 4 dates, pitted
Sea salt, fine grained, best quality
Warm the olive oil in a small pan, over medium heat. You don't want the oil to get warm like you'd cook meat with it, but just warm.
Put the pitted dates in the olive oil and gently roll them in the olive oil. Do this until the dates are warmed through, 3 or 4 minutes.
Once the dates are warmed, put them on a plate and give them a generous sprinkle of sea salt.
Serve and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Other than the sampler of the Oregon Mill Olive Oil, I was not compensated for this post. The opinion and recipe are my own. And if I wasn't paleo, I'd be dipping bread in this oil and just eating it that way. It's that good.
Yesterday for dinner, my 11 year old son and I made Sriracha Chicken Thighs. I had seen this Orange Sriracha Chicken recipe on one of my favorite paleo recipe websites, Nom Nom Paleo, but didn't have half of the ingredients. But I had a fresh orange and sriracha sauce so I decided to make something loosely based upon her recipe. And I had a hungry helper.
We made a simple, dual purpose sauce and marinade and baked the chicken. Pretty easy and he got to continue to play Xbox during the time it took to warm up the oven and cook the chicken.
A few notes about this recipe. Firstly, I used the convection setting on our oven. That contributed to the nicely browned and mostly crisp, chicken skin. I cooked it skin side up first, then flipped it, and flipped it back again to finish it. When the skin side was down, the skin got a little soggy and didn't quite crisp up the same when I finished it skin side up. So, start it skin side down or don't flip it at all.
Secondly, I used the marinade as part of my glaze. I've been taught that this is not a good thing to do, because the marinade picks up beasties from the meat. I figured that I was going to reduce the marinade that it would cook/kill them and I added a little water so that it would stay at a higher heat a little longer while reducing. If that makes you uncomfortable, make more sauce than I show below and keep them separate.
I hadn't planned on turning this dinner into a post, but the comments on some of the photos were encouraging me to post a recipe, so here goes. Thanks for the encouragement!
Juice of one orange
Big squeeze of Sriracha, maybe a tablespoon or so
About 1/4 cup of finely diced red onion
About 1/2 teaspoon salt
Big teaspoon of honey
10 chicken thighs, skin on
Sesame seeds
Small amount of chopped parsley
Turn on your oven to 400 degrees on Convection bake.
Prepare the sauce. Combine the orange juice, sriracha sauce, onion and salt and stir until combined. Taste it and add some honey to take the edge off. Or don't taste it and just add the honey, then taste it to see if its not too hot.
Put the chicken thighs in a big ziploc bag with about half of the sauce to marinade. Let it marinate until your oven is up to temperature or you've played a few games of Call of Duty multiplayer.
Line a rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil, maybe two of them depending upon the size of your thighs (the chicken thighs, silly).
Remove the thighs from the bag and arrange them on the baking sheets, skin side down. Give them some space so that they'll brown and not steam each other. Save the marinade for reduction, if you're going to do that. Put them in the oven for 20 minutes. You'll flip them at that point.
While the chicken is cooking, reduce the sauce in a small saucepan over pretty high heat. If you're using saved marinade, add a little water, a little less than a 1/4 cup, so that it can boil for longer. When the marinade part has reduced, add the remaining sauce and reduce it again. Once it has been reduced, remove the sauce from heat and wait for the chickens. The sauce shouldn't be runny, but not as thick as a jam.
After cooking the thighs for 20 minutes, flip them skin side up and cook them for another 15 minutes. This should result in nicely browned skin.
After the 15 minutes or when the chicken is pretty much cooked and the skin is nice and crisp, spread the sauce on your thighs (still the chicken thighs), on the skin side. Put them back in the oven for about 5 minutes to kind of turn the sauce into a glaze.
When they're done or you're ready to eat, put the chicken thighs on a serving dish and sprinkle with the parsley and sesame seeds.
.JPG)