See's Candies in Woodinville

Woodinville now has a See's Candies! While wine tasting, you can now pop in and get one of the always free samples of their delicious candies. I was invited a media pre-opening event Thursday night, with candy samples, candy box packing races and more candy samples.

The evening started with sampling. Yes, anything we wanted from the display case. And not just the usual one free sample. This was the kind of sampling that required pacing. I had 4 samples within 10 minutes of walking in the door and that was more candy that I've eaten in a month.  It was also over the number of candies that Leanne from Rave and Review decided was the limit for her kids - good thing those kids aren't reading my blog.

See's Candies gives away 1 million pounds in free samples. After a brief break, I was back at the candies, trying things I'd never tried before and making sure that they get to that 1 million pounds this year.  I didn't get to try all of their one hundred different varieties because I was actually candied out. It was a great treat, but with all my clean eating, that was an incredible amount of sugar for me.

Look at that nicely filled candy box.

After a brief information session about the company, we were paired up for candy box filling races. We had to work for the chocolates they were going to give us to take home!  The local management team taught us how to snap out a single paper cup with one hand, while the other, tissue wielding hand would grab the chocolate and place it in the candy box.

I was hoping that it would be a "one for me, one for the box" situation, but we were too closely supervised. But with candy being so seasonal, they need workers at Christmas time and their employees can eat all they want (or can handle). I packed a box of Scotch Mallows, which unfortunately do not have any scotch in them (there is an idea, Mary See and its free)

My favorite candy from See's is the Dark Chocolate Bordeau, which happens to be the number one seller. What is your favorite candy?

See's Candies in Woodinville [store website] is located at 14013 Woodinville Duvall Rd, Woodinville, WA and opened to the public Friday, June 27th. At the time of writing, the shop hours are Mon-Thurs 10am - 6pm, Fri-Sat 10am - 7pm and Sun 12pm - 5pm.

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this post, but I was plied with chocolates. I liked See's Candies before coming to visit and could name all my favorites when I walked in the door. This is my honest opinion plus a few facts I learned about the company along the way.

Northwest Region Grilling Gurus Semi-Finals

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.

1. Too much oil when grilling can lead to soot. Grill marks are good, but soot is not.
2. 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.

@beauraines @TomDouglasCo @CulinaryCouncil ack, short of a non-ripe avocado... pure sacrilege :)
— P.S. (@Patrixmyth) June 7, 2014

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 Experiences with Bulletproof Coffee

People are putting butter and coconut oil in their coffee. And they say its the greatest thing - more focused, more energy, feeling satiated. I read it on the internet and like many things, I took it with a grain of salt.  Then, a few weeks back, I decided to give it a try. I'm a morning person. I like to get up, work out and then eat breakfast.  My regular wake up time is 5:20 AM, so, usually within 2 or 3 hours of getting up I'm eating breakfast.


My daughter has an early morning swim practice which starts at 5AM on Wednesdays, which means we're both up at 4:20AM. I can still go to my 6AM CrossFit, but that really messes with the eat breakfast within 2 or 3 hours. The same week that inspired me to try Bulletproof Coffee (aka butter coffee), I had some changes to my morning schedule and I was going to go to CrossFit at 8AM. But I still got up at 5:20, which didn't quite leave enough time for breakfast to digest - and no one wants to go to CrossFit with a full stomach.  So I decided to try Bulletproofing my coffee, and see if it was worth it.

Bulletproof coffee is simply your morning coffee with a tablespoon of coconut oil and a tablespoon of (grass-fed) butter.  The clean fats provide calories (energy) and really make the coffee creamy. Drinking something is easier and quicker to get down than eating something, so its a way to kickstart your day. You can read more about it and get a recipe here.

My first day trying out Bulletproof coffee was an early morning swim practice day. I made my coffee with my Caffe Vita Theo Blend beans after dropping her off at practice. I used the blender to mix it all in, some people just let the hot coffee melt the fats. The coffee had a nice frothy top and boy was it creamy tasting.

Now here is a little something about me, I like coffee for its taste. I drink my coffee black, my drink of choice is an espresso. But no cream, no sugar. If I drink an espresso, its so dry the foam just stays on top. Its all about the flavor of the coffee.  And so much fat in the drink covered up the coffee flavor. It was like a super-creamy latte. So, it loses a few points for covering the taste of my coffee.

I drank it on my way to CrossFit and was feeling quite energized. My workout went well and I wasn't really that hungry when I came home, but I ate a small breakfast because... Well because you're supposed to eat breakfast, aren't you?  I felt pretty good all day long, but I was also wearing my Captain America t-shirt - he's almost bullet proof.

But that day, I was so thirsty. I couldn't drink enough water. I even emailed some of my friends who've bulletproofed their coffee and they drink 32 ounces of water before drinking their coffee. Lesson learned.

The next day, I got up at my usual 5:20, but wasn't planning on CrossFit until 8AM. So I drank 32 ounces of water and made my butter coffee.  I then sat down and worked on an edX.org class I was taking.  And I felt really focused, considering I was studying big data analytics at 6 in the morning.  CrossFit at 8AM was alright, my energy levels great considering that I hadn't eaten anything and I wasn't all that hungry when I got home and then didn't eat anything until lunch time.

Those two days were a pretty successful test and I've continued to bullet proof my coffee when I have early mornings or planning on going to the later CrossFit sessions. Its been working out well for me. Its almost like a meal replacement - it has enough calories for a meal.  I'm energized, focused and satiated.  My two big lessons are:

1. Don't use your great tasting, special beans or single origin beans. The nuances will be lost under the uber-creaminess.
2. Drink lots (32 ounces) of water before your coffee. I guess it has to do with how the fats are processed by our bodies.

So, what do you put in your coffee and would you put butter in it?

Review: Jawbone MINI JAMBOX - These go up to 11

AT&T provided a Jawbone MINI JAMBOX  for Heather to review, but I'm the big music listener in our house. So, I've been using it quite a bit and AT&T will get two reviews out of it!

The Jawbone MINI JAMBOX is a rechargeable, portable speaker that connects to your smart phone via Bluetooth or mini-stereo plug. Its the smaller sibling to the BIG JAMBOX speaker, but it still has the good sound quality that Jawbone is known for.  The MINI JAMBOX also serves as a speaker phone and I've only used it for one call and my parents didn't even notice.

I primarily use the MINI JAMBOX in my bedroom and bathroom. Dropkick Murphys playing.  It's great listening to music as I read in bed and I love having music in the bathroom with me.  I'll bring the speaker into the bathroom while I shower, and its loud enough to be heard over the running water and the bathroom fan. I've recently switched to a double edged razor (more on that in another post) for shaving and I savor shaving with some

The speaker has an all aluminum construction and is small enough to fit in my back pocket. Its small enough to take it on trips or on a picnic lunch.  There are a few controls on the speaker itself, a multi-purpose play/stop/forward/backward button (depending on how many times you push it) and volume up and down buttons.

The battery lasts about 10 hours and its never a guessing game how much battery life you have left.  When paired with a phone running the Jawbone application, the remaining battery percentage shows up in the notification bar.  It charges through a mini-USB port.

I now keep my Bluetooth on my phone turned on all the time, so its just one button to turn on and my phone can make great sounding music. I just wish my Jawbone II headset was upgrade-able so it'll tell me the battery life through the app.

Likes

• The MINI JAMBOX has excellent bass response, especially considering how small of a box it is.  You can feel the bass when it makes its startup sound. Enough to move the speaker if on uneven footing
• The Jawbone app is awesome and is available from iTunes or Google Play.
• The speaker will talk to you; alerting about low battery or no devices attached. You can even change the voice!
• It goes up to 11.

Dislike

• To change the voice, you need a Windows or Mac machine, unfortunately there isn't Linux support. Yes, I want  the MINI JAMBOX to speak to me in the sultry voice.
• There is some audio lag when watching video. I think that this is just a function of Bluetooth and its only slightly noticeable when watching a documentary type video.

I was not monetarily compensated for this post. Heck, I might not even get unfettered usage of the MINI JAMBOX if Heather decides to take it back from me. But I still honestly think its an awesome speaker.

A snack that I can say YES too

A few week's ago, I got a package in the mail that made me jump up and say "Yes!" I got some YES Bars to snack on. If you haven't heard of YES Bars, they originated in a home kitchen in Southern California when a mom was trying to make a healthy snack for her food sensitive son. Her son loved them, her husband loved them and their friends loved them.  People wanted to buy them and then she was able to get local stores to carry them and it just grew from there.

On top of having such a positive name, YES Bars are clean - gluten free, paleo friendly (meaning no grains, dairy or soy) and no fake, chemically stuff.  The ingredient lists are long, but their made of almonds, macademia nuts, dried fruits, pumpkin and sunflower seeds and the ingredients that really get me going are coffee and cayenne pepper! I like spicy and I love coffee, but if you're not like me, the Macadamia Chocolate Chip is for you. That just means there are more of the Coffee Cayenne for me!

The two flavors each have 4g protein and 16g carbohydrates, making it a great snack. Combined with the healthy fats, 170mg of omega-3s, its a snack that I can feel good about eating any time. It's not quite the bar for after my CrossFit work outs, but in the afternoon when my stomach starts to rumble from when i didn't pack enough lunch, well, if I had more of these bars, they'd be in my messenger bag ready for snacking.

The YES Bars are more like cookies than your typical nut and granola bar, with a nice, chewy texture. They don't fall apart when you sink your teeth into them, as its a moist-chewy cookie. The Macadamia Chocolate Chip had a nice chocolate taste, but not too sweet, as its made with dark chocolate.  The Coffee Cayenne bar warmed my mouth with the subtle spice, like a Mexican chile infused chocolate, not an open assault on your tastebuds.  The coffee was there in the background, making the bar live up to its name.

If these sound like your kind of clean eating and yet delicious snack, get some from TheYESBar.com.  There is a long list of stores in California (and one lucky coffee shop in Denver) that carry the bars as does Amazon Fresh Los Angeles. UPDATE: YES Bars are in Seattle! You can pick them up at Tom Douglas' Assembly Hall and soon to be at Healeo on Capital Hill.

What kind of things do you like for clean snacks? Which one of these sounds good to you?

Note: I got a few bars in trade for an honest review. I wouldn't write about them if I didn't like them. I liked them. I wish that stores in the Pacific Northwest carried these bars. I wish I had more to carry around with me for when I needed a snack.

Book Review: The Carnivore's Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat

I got my hands on an advanced readers copy of The Carnivore's Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat by Patrick Martins and enjoyed the book. The book comes out on June 10th, 2014 and you can pre-order it on Amazon.

The Carnivore's Manifesto: Eating Well, Eating Responsibly, and Eating Meat really is a manifesto. The author, Patrick Martins, has been instrumental in founding the Slow Food movement and is passionate about clean, sustainable, eating and farming.  He uses words and phrases like 'complicit in their crimes' and talks about the extinction of heritage pigs and turkeys.  He wouldn't be out of place in Berkeley, yelling on Sproul Plaza about his cause.

The book is a series of short essays on a topic ranging from the food supply chain, breeding conditions, artisan producers and vignettes told from the perspective of a cow, pig and turkey.  I'd read a few at night before going to bed.

Like other books I've read, this book does not take the stance that being a meat eater is good and vegetarianism isn't. This isn't a foil to the vegetarians, but to the Concentrated Agriculture Feeding Organizations. His view is that if you're going to eat meat, give the animal the best life, rather than constrain it to some dark, fume filled barn. The activist in Patrick wants people to make decisions that get food production out of the big corporate, profit centric organizations and into the hands of sustainable, heritage producers and help them become profitable. These sustainable operations not only make great tasting food, but they help the whole life cycle as opposed to creating waste while producing genetically modified meat.

Something I found to be very interesting was his perspective on ground meat - we need to eat more of it. This allows the farmer to sell the fewer desirable cuts of meat from the cow/pig/turkey and get a good price for the rest of it. If we only buy filet or pork loins, the farmer won't have a good opportunity to sell the rest.

It's a good read, but every once in a while you have to push past the activist cries. This book won't change vegetarian's opinions, but I don't think it was meant to. It's really targeted to those that already eat meat, but don't yet understand the dark side of what happens to get meat into your grocery store.

View all my reviews

As a note, this isn't a sponsored post, but an my own book review and like everything else, my own opinion. The post does contain affiliate links, so if you click it to Amazon, I'll get a little back. I was able to get my hands on the advanced readers copy at work. As I write my reviews on Goodreads, I think about the book reports that my kids have to write for school.  Now, if any publishers would like me to read and review books on clean living or the paleo lifestyle, I'd be happy to!

Meeting Alan Adler - My Rockstar Moment at SCAA 2014

For the last two days, I've been wandering the Washington State Convention Center enjoying the sights, smells and tastes of the Specialty Coffee Association of America's 2014 Event.  The entire spectrum of specialty coffee is represented here, from growers to roasters, cafes to food processing and packaging companies, repair parts to purveyors of tea. But I ran into Alan Adler, the inventor and designer of the Aeropress coffee maker.

I was first introduced to Alan's products when I got an Aerobie for Christmas during my childhood. If you're not familiar with the Aerobie, it was a bright orange, unique ring shaped frisbee that could be easily thrown long distances.

Fast forward to a few years ago, and I got more and more into coffee. While I really love espresso, I've always been interested in how I can get excellent coffee while hiking, another one of my passions. While learning about different methods to make coffee, I read about the Aeropress in online forums.  I'll admit, I was a bit of a skeptic that something as simple as that could make great coffee.

Fast forward a few more years, when I had stopped telecommuting and worked in an office in downtown Seattle (read: no longer working at home with my espresso machine), I was getting fed up with the coffee provided in the work kitchen. Yeah, even though I work in the coffee mecca of the Northwest and have more than 5 excellent cafe's within blocks of my workplace, the coffee in the office just wasn't very good.

One of my co-workers had an Aeropress and he made me a cup of coffee one day. He was deliberate about it, carefully measuring the water temperature, brew time and the amount of water. And the little plastic plunger coffee maker really did make excellent coffee.

I was hooked. A low price, easily portable coffee maker that makes great coffee.  Thoughts of fresh brewed coffee while backpacking were going through my head and I bought one. I make coffee almost every work day with my Aeropress and bring it home with me on the weekends. I've even found the cafe that will sell beans and grind them for me.

So, back to SCAA 2014. When I was walking through the Expo Hall, I was totally excited to see Alan Adler at the Aeropress booth. I even got my wife to snap our picture while I was having my geek out, meeting a rock star moment.

While chatting with Alan, he shared that his preferred Aeropress brew method was straight up, which is neat because all of the people of I know use the inverted method.  He also keeps the brew time to a minimum. I'm going to have to try the straight up technique next time.

He wouldn't share what his next big thing was, but he did assure me that there were ideas on the burners!

Who are the rock stars that you'd want to meet that reveal what kind of a geek you are?

Alone with a bunch of Strawberries

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

1. Wash, core and slice the strawberries. Arrange on a plate and put in the freezer.
2. Put a banana in the freezer.
3. Let them freeze for 15 - 30 minutes.
4. Once you're ready, scrape the strawberries into your blender. 
5. Peel and slice the banana in 1/2" slices into the blender.
6. Add a dash of vanilla extract and about 1 cup of almond milk.
7. Blend until smooth.
8. Divide the smoothie among your glasses and enjoy!

Leftover egg whites? Make meringues and coconut macaroons!

Earlier in the week, my wife made mayonnaise from scratch and we had leftover egg whites. A bunch of them.  When we had left over egg whites before, one of my friends on Facebook suggested that I make meringues.  So, some quick Google searches led me to Elana's Pantry where I found both a meringue recipe and a coconut macaroon recipe. Her website has lots of gluten free, grain free, dairy free and paleo recipes, so its a great resource for my cooking adventures.

Both recipes are easy to make only require a few ingredients. The macaroons were quick to make and quick to bake. I'm an early riser, so they were prepared and baked before everybody else was awake.  My idea was to make them for dessert tonight.

While they were cooling on the counter, the rest of my family started to wake up. "I only made 10 macaroons, that's two for each of us for dessert.  If you eat them before, then there are less for you for dessert."

It's 5pm as I write this and four macaroons have been eaten, one of them even for breakfast.

It was kind of awesome because I made new friends on the internet today and inspired me to make the meringues too.

@scoutshonor @beauraines Dang I love macaroons! You know what I want that doesn't exist? Paleo MERINGUES. ((sigh))
— Monica Ricci, CPO® (@MonicaRicci) April 6, 2014

We traded some tweets, shared the links to Elana's pantry and after CrossFit, I made meringues too.  They're easy to make, egg whites and maple syrup, but they take two hours to bake, and then an hour to cool.

They're in the oven and I've already been asked twice by the kids if they really take two hours to bake. Hopefully, this will turn out well and help teach the kids patience and that paleo desserts can be good. With the kids on spring break, they usually turn their idleness into cookie baking. Like octupling  the cookie recipe.  Maybe my treats can satisfy them for a bit.

Heather kept thinking I was making French macarons with all the egg white beating I was doing.  Those take a little more work, but I might try this recipe sometime when I'm feeling a little more ambitious in my cooking!

So there's still an hour to go on the meringues. I think I'm going to go drizzle chocolate on the coconut macaroons!  I hope you had a good weekend!

Using YouTube videos to send a message

My kids got me a Google Chromecast for Christmas and its been really cool. It makes it so easy to get music, movies and videos into my living room. But its also created a new family activity where we'll all sit and share interesting YouTube videos with each other.

Last night, there was a new development in how we use Chromecast and communicate. We were sucked into watching the Justin Bieber deposition (he's kind of a douchebag) and didn't notice that our oldest had disappeared.  Suddenly our video was interrupted by this video.

Yes, can you guess where he was. And what he had a shortage of. And his pleas for help unheard, as we watched how ridiculous Justin Bieber was.  We replenished him and all went back to watching videos.

Our daughter suggested we watch the Oculus preview. I'll link to it so you can watch it, it you want, but I don't recommend it.  It's creepy. Creepy like the back of my neck was all tingly and I was there, in my living room with the lights on. And it was just a 2 and a half minute preview.

Our oldest weighed in on his opinion about the movie with this clip. I am in wholehearted agreement. Not a movie that I'll be watching.

An interesting development in communication, wouldn't you say?  How do you use technology to communicate in your house?

Home Made 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

1. 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.
2. After soaking, drain the nuts and place the nuts in a blender with 2 cups of fresh water.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Mix in your sweetener, if you choose to be a little sweeter.
6. 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!

My Whole Life Challenge Experience

This weekend ends the Whole Life Challenge, an 8 week challenge to help make some positive lifestyle changes and provide a framework for some accountability. My CrossFit box, Cascade CrossFit, along with many others started this shortly after the beginning of the year and pushed our way through until now.

All in all, it was a good experience. I stick to a pretty clean, paleo lifestyle and do CrossFit regularly, so the workout and mobility daily challenge wasn't that tough. I played by the advanced nutrition rules, which were really, really strict - no sweetener other than Stevia and the anti-caking agents in lots of spices were excluded, too.

But the things I liked the best from this challenge were the Life Style Challenges.  The early ones were slam dunks, too: drink half your body weight in ounces in water and  get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. I know what it takes for me to be effective and stick to a pretty good schedule; in fact, my kids poke fun of me for having a bed time. After starting CrossFit, I carry a water bottle with me everywhere I go, so that was easy.

But then it started changing up a bit.  We had to practice mindfulness for 10 minutes a day. I had meditated as part of a Hapkido class when I was a kid, but never had done it as an adult.  And it was awesome.  Ten minutes of time to clear my mind just wasn't enough. It helped me deal with a bunch of external stresses in my life.

The challenge changed to 10 minutes of meaningful reading. I would regularly read before going to bed to help draw my day to a close, but nothing that I would call meaningful. A good friend of mine had given me Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties , by Ajahn Brahm a few years ago and after the meditation, reading his Buddhist tales seemed to follow well. And again, it was well timed. Several of the parables had direct connection to my life right now.

The challenge started with a benchmark workout. You can do any workout as long as you can score it. We did Rankel at the start and after the challenge, 20 minutes As Many Rounds As Possible 6 225 pound dead lifts, 7 burpee pullups, 10 53 pound kettlebell swings and a 200 meter run. After the challenge, I got 17 more reps, almost a full round more.

At the beginning of the challenge, I would eat Lara Bars before and after working out. To help control costs, I started making my own Awesome Bars. This is something that I know I'll keep up with, I enjoy cooking and making my own food. I also have made almond milk from raw almonds, twice (more to come on my blog for that later).

It was a good experience. I can make a commitment to some pretty strict rules and live with them. I learned more about meditating and its something I want to continue. I learned how much I have going through my head and recognize the benefits of the clarity that mindfulness provides.  I learned how to make some nutritious and clean snacks.

Would I do it again? I don't think so. I'm coming from a pretty good starting point and have been making great progress with my strength and fitness. In the last 8 days, I've had 3 PRs (CrossFit Open 14.2, Overhead Squat max weight and the re-test of Rankel). Some of that is due to the challenge and some of that is due to the lifestyle I've already implemented.

If you're a person who likes to compete against others, do things for points and need to implement some healthy lifestyle changes, the Whole Life Challenge is a really good thing. The community is helpful and supportive and the guys that run it are involved. What really matters is what you take from the challenge and how you go on living your life.

Did you compete in the Whole Life Challenge? What did you think? What habits are going to stick?

I did not receive compensation for this post; however, I was given a free entry into the challenge. I wasn't actually even asked to write this post, but its all my honest opinion. Get out there, challenge yourself and see what happens.

Snoqualmie Ice Cream Scoop Shop is Back

I got to spend Wednesday evening at the Pre-Grand Opening event for the Snoqualmie Ice Cream scoop shop and let me tell you it was awesome.  Their ice cream on its own is already great and they've added boozy milkshakes, new sundaes and flatbreads to their menu. If you're lucky enough to live in the Seattle area, you should go check out their new scoop shop some time.

Snoqualmie Ice Cream is a super-premium ice cream made here in Washington, with real ingredients. They grow a lot of their own fruit and have 400 chickens on their property.  From their scoop shop, you can see into one of their test kitchens. I was impressed, the ingredients on their shelves looked just like the ingredients in my pantry; real food not processed, industrial flavorings. Check out the picture below and count how many you have in your pantry!

We got to try little samplers of every shake on the menu board in the first picture and they were all really good. My favorite was the Espresso Chocolate Stout milk shake, but the Candied Bourbon Sundae was right behind.  And when they weren't bringing around samples or flat breads, we got to taste ice cream!  Now that is a great Wednesday night dinner, if you ask me!

Eating ice cream is a way to replenish your glycogen stores, right? We were out of sweet potatoes at home, so I needed to get my carbs somehow. Even if it wasn't paleo.  Yeah, so I cheated that night. I lost the day's nutrition points for the Whole Life Challenge.

But it was worth it.  Lavender ice cream, with its fragrant taste. Bourbon ice cream made with Maker's Mark. Basil ice cream. My tastes run towards savory, but the Salted Caramel and Mukilteo Mudd are delicous too!

If getting to Maltby, Washington (which they should probably rename to Malty) to the scoop shop isn't hoing to happen, you can find Snoqualmie Ice Cream in stores in the Western states. If you don't live in a Western state, maybe you should move.

This was not a compensated post and I was entirely sober when i wrote this; the sugar and alcohol had worn off. It is all my own opinion and tastes. Enjoy your treats.

Dinner with Chef and Story Teller Russell Lowell

Thursday night, I was invited to dinner with Chef Russell Lowell at his restaurant, Russell's.  Dinner with a great North West chef at the Best Independent Restaurant winner of the Washington Wine Awards? In a rustic, yet elegant former barn?  I'm in. You don't have to ask twice.



The restaurant is comfortable, yet elegant at the same time. Beautiful place settings and not too crowded would make it a great dinner for prom or anniversary or a nice business dinner.  I was looking forward to the dinner, because everything looked great from the New Bedford Sea Scallops in beurre blanc to the Seared Duck. I'm participating in the Whole Life Challenge and I decided that this was going to be worth the points lost.



Dinner was filled with fun conversations with Meeghan Black (yes, from Gardening with Ciscoe) and T'Chani Hill and local wine maker Kevin Lantz (and yes, his Viogner was served at dinner). I lucked out and the perfectly seared scallops were served as the appetizer and followed by a wonderful, beet salad special. Goat cheese, candied walnuts and a delightful vinaigrette topped off peppery arugula and beets. Definitely worth the cheats.



I've always been afraid to buy duck and prepare it, I think I'm fearful of messing up the investment, so when we got our choice from the menu for dinner, the seared duck was an easy choice.  The duck was served with a savory roasted shallot glace, perfectly complimenting the duck.  Heather ordered the rack of lamb, which we rarely make at home, because I think its too gamey. She shared a taste of the nicely crusted, but still red on the inside lamb, and if every lamb tasted that good, you could make a lamb believer out of me.   Chef Russell supports Washington farms and vine yards and this lamb came from Eastern Washington - far better than the Australian lamb I've had before.

Chef Russell got up and spoke during dinner. I'm beginning to really enjoy listening to chefs speak, because they always have some of the most interesting tales to tell. And Chef Russell has definitely got a personality!

I enjoy sitting at breakfast on Sundays, reading a cookbook, both for inspiration and for the beautiful photography. Chef Russell has a cookbook coming out in May and it's going to be one of those read it for the stories as well as the recipes.  I can't retell the story he told (I wouldn't do it justice) us from the book, but it involves Hollywood celebrities, pugilism close calls, road kill, funeral wakes and great white sharks.  If you've got an experience that involves all of those, you've got to put it in a book.  I look forward to getting my hands on it when it comes out.

And dessert... I cheated for sure. I was torn between the creme brulee and the chocolate gateau. Winemaker Kevin Lantz, who eats frequently at Russells' strongly recommended the gateau, so I went with that.  Rich, dark chocolate cake, still gooey and molten on the inside, was served with creme Anglaise and a berry coulis. I was in heaven.

It was a wonderful evening, with new friends, great food and excellent stories.

Special thanks go to Heather for letting me use her photographs and to Karie Engels for putting this all together. I was not compensated for this post, but I got a wonderful dinner and night out. Everything I write is, as always, my own opinion. And if you've got something great, I'd be happy to check it out and write about it too!

Making Sunday Breakfasts Special

Five days a week, I eat breakfast at my office. I do prepare my food in advance, so I've got something good to eat, but almost everyday, its at my desk. And by doing my food prep, I eat the same thing all week long.  So, on the weekends, and especially Sunday, because I have more time, I try to make those breakfasts special.

Typically, on Sunday, I'll read a cookbook as I eat my breakfast and enjoy my espresso.  Today, while there was no reading, I still found a way to make breakfast special.  As a crossfitter, I eat a lot of sweet potatoes and most of the breakfasts I make include them in some form.  And today, I found a new way to eat them.  I made paleo biscuits!

I split my biscuits in two and served them with some sauteed spinach and poached eggs. I've really gotten into poached eggs of late, but that is a topic for another post.

PaleoOMG's recipe for Shrimp and Jalapeno Sweet Potato biscuits was my inspiration. I had neither shrimp nor jalapenos, so I just left them out, and to fill the gap, I added some onion powder.  And to top it all off, they're Whole Life Challenge compliant (even for the Advanced nutrition challenge).  What, you thought I was going to top it with jam? Maybe bacon jam, once I figure out the right way to make that paleo.

The recipe is pretty quick and easy to make, they don't really take longer than making baking powder biscuits. I did microwave my sweet potato instead of cooking it in the oven, that sped things along.

I'll definitely be making these again and want to try the original recipe, but it was great to have biscuits in the morning with breakfast.

Ingredients
1 largish sweet potato, mashed
3 eggs, beaten
3 T bacon fat
3 T coconut flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Pre-heat your oven to 375.
2. In a medium sized mixing bowl, mix the eggs into the sweet potato and then mix in the fat.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix until combined.
4. Use an ice cream scoop and drop the batter on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.
5. Bake for 22-25 minutes and then eat them.

Makes about 8 drop biscuits.  Which probably isn't enough.

Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Once the dates are warmed, put them on a plate and give them a generous sprinkle of sea salt.
4. 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.

Food Fun This Week

This has probably been the most foodie week since I went to the International Food Bloggers Conference in September. It was awesome, I got to meet Michelle Tam from Nom Nom Paleo, met the awesome marketing crew from Tessemae's and got to try food from some cool food trucks at a Yelp party!



 On Sunday, I went to the book signing for Michelle Tam's book, Food for Humans. Her blog is one that was really helpful in my transition to eating Paleo. On top of having delicious, healthy recipes, she's got a great personality which comes out in her writing. And she also went to Cal, we were there at the same time, but she graduated a year before me!

Her husband, Henry, was there too and it was really cool to learn how they went about their publishing experience. By his reports, they did it wrong, but they made a pretty awesome book out of it!



Tuesday, I went to dinner with a few other local food bloggers and the marketing team from Tessemae's. This was quite exciting, because Tessemae's is all about sauces and dressings made with real, clean ingredients, which fit in perfectly with my lifestyle.  I do a lot of label reading and when you can find a brand that you trust and tastes awesome, it's a realy nice thing.

We got about 6 bottles of dressing and I've been using it in my tuna salad and I'm looking forward to hot wings at our Super Bowl watching party. Go Hawks!



Thursday night was the Yelp Holiday Hangover Party in a really cool space in Pioneer Square.  I blew out my Whole Life Challenge nutrition points and enjoyed Theo Chocolates, Ezells Fried Chicken and street tacos from Contigo. It was so worth it.




This wasn't a normal week for me, but it was a good one!  What did you eat this week?

Make Your Own Lara Bars

Because I'm participating in the Whole Life Challenge, I bought a package of dates earlier this week.  Dates are a handy quick snack and great if you want something sweet. I enjoy eating the dates straight, wrapped in prosciutto, or as an ingredient in my paleo protein shakes. I also picked up a box of Lara Bars which I enjoy as well.

Having a bounty of dates, I decided to try making my own Lara Bars.  And because I can never find the Cappuccino Lara Bar, that was the flavor I decided to take on.

They were pretty simple to make and this way you can make your own flavor combinations.  I could have used some cocoa to make this a mocha Lara Bar.  Another alternative I'd like to try would be with some unsweetened coconut and maybe chocolate (once the WLC is done).

What flavors do you think would be good to try?

Ingredients
12 dates, seeded
about 1/2 cup pecans and roasted almonds - about equal in quantity to the dates
1 tablespoon of finely ground coffee beans

1. Cut the dates into small pieces and pulse in the small bowl of a food processor until they are smaller. Yes, I know how silly of an instruction that sounds.
2. Add the nuts and continue to pulse the dates and nuts.   The dates will become stickier and pickup the nuts and the nuts will get to a chopped consistency.
3. Add the ground coffee and pulse it a little more.  It will probably form some balls in the food processor bowl.
4. Dump the mixture into another bowl and further mix it with your hands.  When its well mixed, roll it into a ball.
   
5. Place the ball between two sheets of parchment paper and press into a bar like shape.  I used my hands to form a rectangle and then used a rolling pin to help flatten it (Thanks to Nom Nom Paleo for that set of instructions).
   
6. Cut the bar into individual serving pieces.
7. Wrap in your parchment paper so they don't stick together and store in the refrigerator.

Starting the Whole Life Challenge

My CrossFit box is doing the Whole Life Challenge, an 8 week challenge in making life style changes. It started Saturday and I'm now heading into the first work week. I don't think that this is going to be a big deal, because my strict paleo challenge (posts here, here and here) at the beginning of last year helped cement some good practices.

I eat pretty clean and cheat rarely.  My only exceptions to paleo eating on a regular basis are all to support working out - a Clif Bar before 6AM CrossFit and a protein shake afterwards.

Unfortunately, these two exceptions don't fly in the Whole Life Challenge.  I can eat a date or two on the way to CrossFit, but I've got to work on some substitute for the protein shake.  I'm pretty lean and need to build muscle mass.  So, for these first few days, I'm just going to take the hit and lose the nutrition points.

Heather and I went to the store today and really, really looked at labels.  There is added sugar in so many things!  Almost all of the dried fruit had added sugar, which seems kind of silly, given how sweet fruit is to start.  Even the uncured bacon, no nitrates used, has sugar in it.  Without bacon, this challenge might get a little harder.  Not.

I've made bacon before in my smoker, and given that its winter time and cooler here, my smoker might stay cool enough for making bacon and not cooking the pork belly.  I'll take a stab at making WLC compliant sriracha sauce during this challenge.  I'll try making some Lara bars too, since I found a big box of dates at Costco.

So, stay tuned and watch this blog for updates.  I'll cook some good food and see how this challenge goes!

Did you make any fitness resolutions or are you participating in some kind of challenge?


Note:  Because my wife Heather has a pretty big blog, she convinced the Whole Life Challenge people to give her 2 entries to the Challenge.  I got one of them and though they didn't ask me to write anything, I'll be sharing my experiences in my words.

Paleo Salted Caramel Chocolate Bacon Bark

I think that every word in that title is awesome. Any one of those in a dessert is great and if you combine them, its like multiplying awesomness.  At my CrossFit box's holiday party, they were going to have a paleo recipe contest.  When I read this recipe on Civilized Caveman's blog, I knew it was the one I was going to make.

George, from Civilized Caveman, got a copy of The Paleo Chocolate Lover's Cookbook, and he shared the recipe on his blog.  My local library has 16 copies and one is on hold for me. I'm waiting with bated breath.

All in all, its pretty easy to make, but it does take some time to allow the chocolate and caramel to cool.  When I made a larger, second batch, I actually took advantage of the unusually cold weather we were having in Seattle to cool my caramel on the back porch!

My daughter helped me with these photos. The film strip doesn't do them justice.

Don't worry that the recipe has warnings to wear gloves, the coconut milk and sugar don't seem to get as hot as non-paleo caramel's cream and sugar, but do use a large enough pan.  I made a single batch in a 2 quart sauce pan and it does bubble up.  Do clear a bit of space in your fridge so that you can fit your chocolate to cool on a flat space.

Reading the recipe on my borrowed tablet on a Belkin Tablet Chef Stand!

Also, give it plenty of time to cook.  My first batch, I cooked a little hotter than my second batch and it came out much more like a sticky caramel candy, but it was harder to drizzle over the top of the chocolate.  My second batch, I simmered longer, but at a lower temperature, and it was a thick caramel sauce.

You'll see in one of my pictures, I wasn't using parchment paper, but some plastic wrap.  Make sure whatever layer you use covers the sides of your pan, don't just use a Silpat. The chocolate will leak under and stick to the pan and you won't get nice bark.

Bacon, bacon, bacon!

I also had one not-really-a-problem problem.  Both times, I had too much bacon.  I mean, too much bacon for my candy, but between my kids and I, we ate it right up.  Some problems, like high sales rates, are good problems to have.

The Paleo Salted Caramel Chocolate Bacon Bark was a hit at the party, even among the people that weren't all that into sweet and savory combined into one.  Alas, it was not the winning recipe of the night; that honor went to a Korean BBQ chicken recipe.  I'll admit it, it was really great chicken, cooked perfectly, with just the right amount of smokiness from the grill.

If you make it, let me know how it goes!