In other news, we are getting ready for Halloween.  I’m still getting used to doing Halloween every year again.  Sometime around 13 years of age I got my first of many menial food service jobs. My initial foray was at a Dunkin’ Donuts.  Back then Dunkin Donuts had a long coffee counter where regulars hung out and we had to wear hideous brown, orange, and pink thigh-length smocks with matching visors. Even though I got sent home early my first day on the job for consistently making inaccurate change, they kept me around until I moved up in the world by landing a choice cashier job at a local bookstore.  I think the onset of regular employment marked the end of trick-or-treating.  Once you are actually able to afford the bags of candy from the supermarket yourself, the trick-or-treat excitement dies away.   I mostly ignored Halloween from that point on until a few years ago when I realized my children were going to be trick-or-treating soon.  Now it’s a really big deal, on par I’d say with Easter or Thanksgiving (not quite at the level of the big “C”).  They are both going as werewolves although there is still time for last-minute mind changes.  I offered to go with them as the victim, perhaps with a prosthetic bloody stump or a fake neck gash but they just looked at me with big sad eyes and said softly, “Please, mom, no”.  Oops.

It’s a dark, wet, gloomy morning here in the mitten. There is no doubt that fall is upon us.  The leaves are beginning to change, my garden is (finally!) dying, and huge flocks of thousands of birds have been occasionally sweeping through our tree tops.

All this fall-ness makes me want to cook squash.

Last night I put together a delicious stuffed squash dish that I thought I’d share.  Not only is this a complete meal in itself, but the whole dish only took me a little over a half hour from start to finish.  I think I’ll be making variations on this a lot this fall.

If you don’t eat dairy or do not tolerate cheese, my apologies in advance.  I have made this pizza crust without the parmesan cheese but it was not as firm as it is otherwise.  I welcome you to give it a shot, though, and see what you think.  I have also made this recipe using zucchini instead of the eggplant.  If you do this, just make sure you salt the shredded zucchini and squeeze out the excess moisture.  Also, make sure you end up with a pound of shredded zucchini before you add the other ingredients.  If you’re not sure how to get the water out of shredded zucchini, take a look at my recipe video from last year.

I hope this recipe is as useful to you as it has been for me. As I mention in the video, half of this crust, which I consider to be one serving, has about 330 calories. Not too shabby! Wishing you many years of delicious primal pizzas!

There are two things you may not know about me.  The first is that I enjoy eating large quantities.  I don’t know how I developed this inclination, but there it is.  I distinctly remember the day I was able to eat entire can of Spaghetti-O’s, just like my big brother.  I was so proud.  I once asked my husband if he had ever dated a woman who could eat more than me.  He responded with a nervous look but I eventually got him to admit that he hadn’t.  Luckily, I eat a lot vegetables or I’d probably be getting lap band surgery by now.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to tone things down somewhat, but I’ll always be a big eater at heart.

The other thing is that, like the hot-blooded American I am, pizza is one of my favorite foods.  Despite the countless hours of my life I’ve spent learning about and working with ingredients and cuisines of all kinds, I still have the same favorite foods as your typical 3^rd grader.   Oh well.

Now that you know these things about me, you should also be aware that it has been my mission for well over a year now to come up with what I consider to be an ideal primal pizza crust.  The problem with most primal or paleo pizza crusts that I have tested is that they are either so heavy and caloric that you can only eat a slice or two (I’m thinking your typical almond flour crusts or ‘meatzas’), or they are unreliable and floppy.  I’ve heard good things about cauliflower crusts but truth be told I‘ve never been able to make that work.

In order to qualify as ideal in my mind, a crust must meet all of the following requirements:

1)   The pizza crust must not be overwhelmingly caloric.

2)   There must be no mistaking the crust for a frittata!

3)   The crust must stand firm, allowing you to easily enjoy the pizza with hands, not fork.

4)   The crust must be relatively easy to make.

5)   The crust must, at the very least, have a neutral flavor that does not interfere with the ‘pizza experience’.

Well, I’ve done it.  My primal pizza crust not only meets all of my ideal criteria but it is only 330 calories per serving, allowing plenty of ‘room’ for your favorite toppings.  A serving can be half of a large pizza (see photo) or, if you prefer, an entire individual pizza.  Further, I’ve managed this without using any weird ingredients or complicated techniques.  You can easily throw this crust together on a busy weeknight.

Sorry for the teaser but I am waiting until September to share the recipe in the new cookbook.  I’m just so happy to have finally accomplished this that I couldn’t wait to share the news.   I know you guys will come up with all sorts of excellent additions and modifications so I am looking forward to that, too!

My go-to lunch is a chunk of meat cooked up with some vegetables on the stove. At the moment, however, we are deep into summer and I really haven’t been feeling like pushing food around over a hot stove at noon. Furthermore, It is not always convenient to be home at lunch time.  If you’ve been eating primal for any length of time I am sure you have come to know the elusive nature of the on-the-go lunch in a life without grains.  Sometimes a sandwich would be really handy, and I don’t mean one where a big saggy piece of lettuce is the ‘bread’ because that’s just depressing.

I came to learn of the green eggs and ham sandwich from Krista Schaus’s blog.  Krista is an amazing individual.  In addition to being an ex-police officer, she is BOTH a competitive bodybuilder and powerlifter from Toronto. (By the way, anyone else notice there seems to be a disproportionate number of people from Toronto with strength training websites and blogs?  Why is that?).   She is owner of Defining Edge Fitness which offers an intriguing service called Biosignature Assessment.  Apparently they can analyze your hormone levels and make individualized training and nutrition recommendations based on the results. Anyway, Krista’s recipe calls for oats.  I substituted shredded coconut as a thickener and then threw in ¼ cup of raw almonds for good measure.  The result is a substantial bread-like patty that holds together really well.

You can easily whip up a batch of these in the morning or on the weekend.  This recipe will make 6 pancakes – enough for 3 sandwiches.  My kids will actually eat these hot of the skillet as if they were ‘regular’ pancakes if I put some maple syrup on them!  You can also make a big batch and keep these in a plastic baggie in the fridge.  Use them for sandwiches, hamburgers, or even just as a convenient snack.  I haven’t tried this yet but I think they’d be fabulous with just a little almond butter spread on top.

My turkey and brie sandwich.

Dave getting ready to eat his fancy stuffed pork chop

There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.  You know all the fancy photos of the food on this site?  The ones that make it look like we live in some kind of Autumn paradise.  Or the ones that look like we spend our evenings gathered around a cozy dining room table sipping wine?  It’s all fake.  Well, the food is real, but the rest of it is staged.  Dave, my husband and resident photographer, has a number of high-tech cameras in addition to lighting equipment, light boxes, studio reflectors, etc…. So if your reality doesn’t resemble the food photography you find here, don’t feel bad.  Mine doesn’t either.

Even though Dave knows what he’s doing and we’ve got some nice equipment, it’s actually really hard to get a decent picture sometimes – especially when it comes to meat!  Meat tends to look either greasy or dried out.  This is frustrating because while your carefully prepared steak might look amazing in person, as soon as you take the picture it is reduced to a big ugly blob of brown.  Baked goods are the opposite.  They are actually enhanced through photography.  Do a search on a site like tastespotting and compare the number of meatloaf photos with the number of cupcake photos and you’ll see what I mean.

What this all boils down to is that I came up with a really good stuffed pork chops recipe the other night but the photos turned out like crap.  It would be a shame not to share the recipe with you just because we couldn’t get a good picture, though.  Luckily, Dave was wearing his skeleton costume.

Feliz Dia de los Muertos!

Another use for Vibram 5 Fingers: skeleton feet!

Real life. Dave trying to edit photos for the blog.

You can broil the salmon fillets directly on the foil but if you place them on a rack as shown (this cooling rack I have happens to fit this baking sheet pretty nicely) then the fish doesn't get soggy as it cooks in its own juices.

But let’s not think about that.

Let’s think about all the great cooking that can be done during the colder part of the year. This is the time for stews and slow-cookers, root vegetables and warm spices… It’s also a good time to ramp up your vitamin D intake so that you don’t get rickets or catch the flu. I never used to give vitamin D much thought but it is in the news everywhere now since apparently most of us are horribly deficient. The current recommendation is 400 IU/day for adults but many consider that number to be too low. In any case, it’s not a bad idea to increase that number to at least 800-1000 IU/day especially if you are a woman (as vitamin D increases calcium absorption) or live in a northern latitude. By the way, only kids get rickets but vitamin D deficiency in adults is associated with an alarming number of other health problems. Here’s an interesting article from the Weston A Price Foundation on the matter (by the way, those folks recommend 10,000 IU/day!).

Salmon is an excellent natural source of vitamin D although the content varies considerably depending on whether the salmon is wild caught or farmed. Wild caught salmon can contain as much as 1000 IU per 3.5oz portion whereas farmed salmon generally contains far less. Unless you plan to eat salmon or shrimp everyday (or you’re lucky enough to live in the sun all year) the best way to get your vitamin D is to take cod liver oil daily. I plan to do this as soon as I get around to it.

Sri Lankan Coconut Chicken Curry

If I believed in such things, I would say I spent a former life in Southern Asia.  I have always been fascinated with this area of the world and I adore Indian cuisine.  At various times throughout my life I have tried to travel there but have always been thwarted or disrailed in one way or another (mom, if you’re reading this, I don’t mean by you).  I even tried learning Hindi on my own for a while.  My hope is that I can make it there before I get too old and stodgy and have to stay at a Hilton and take guided tours everywhere.   There’s an Indian restaurant about 30 minutes from where I live and the kids and I occasionally meet Dave there during his lunch break.  As delicious as the food is, it is a horrible place to eat primal unless, unlike me, you are able to resist naan and gulab jamun.

Although they utilize many of the same ingredients, Sri Lankan and Indian cuisine really shouldn’t be lumped together.  For one thing, Sri Lankan cuisine tends to be spicier. Chilies are used liberally and some have said some Sri Lankan dishes are the hottest in the world in terms of chili content.  Most curries are prepared in coconut milk to provide a counterbalance to the spice and some special ingredients indigenous to the region are used.

Anuja is a second-generation Sri Lankan and long-time colleague of my husband’s.  She generously sent me her recipe for a chicken curry that looked too delicious to pass up.   I love the idea of incorporating a variety of cuisines into a primal diet.  It’s so much more fun to expand your food choices by drawing upon other traditions than it is trying to make a primal mac and cheese out of cauliflower and almond milk.  If you need to make a special trip to an Indian grocery to get ingredients for this recipe take advantage of the opportunity to buy some common spices at a fraction of the usual price.   I had no idea how badly I had been getting ripped off on cumin.

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I told my dad that pork chops were my favorite meat. I actually meant spare ribs but got the names confused. After that he would make me pork chops on the grill and happily inform me that he was making my favorite dinner. I don’t know why but I could never bring myself to tell him I had made a mistake. Thank goodness I’m a grown-up now and can have ribs whenever I please because I still love them. Unfortunately, I avoided preparing them on my own for years in part because I was put off by the saturated fat content. I should have been listening to my inner cave-child. Now I eat them with wild abandon.

In addition to spare ribs, I also like barbeque sauce. Who doesn’t? But I can’t quite imagine barbeque sauce without sugar. So I set out to create another flavorful but healthier condiment for my ribs. The first time around I created some kind of mango-rum concoction which was okay, but needed work. This time, I used Indian flavors and was very happy with the final product. These ribs were sweet, tangy, spicy, and falling off the bone. I highly recommend them.

My dad died several years ago but his birthday was this week. Happy birthday, dad. You probably would not have liked them much, with the Indian spices and all, but these ribs are for you!

Remove the thin membrane that lines the underside of the ribs before cooking. This increases surface area for the rub and also makes the ribs easier to cut.

If you're cooking them on the grill, either use the upper rack as I did here or put them on the opposite side of the grill from the flame. Close the lid and try to maintain an internal grill temp of about 300-350 degrees.

This post is participating in Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade.

Kohlrabi Casserole with Sausage and Fresh Thyme

This is my first year eating kohlrabi, thanks to my CSA farm share.  I wonder where this vegetable has been all my life!  It’s like it just appeared out of nowhere.  I have only just begun to explore the possibilities of kohlrabi but so far I am quite taken.  Fresh, the texture and water content (though not flavor) reminds me of jicama.  You can shred it, dip it, put it in a salad, whatever.  Cooked, however, it takes on a totally different quality.  It firms up like the center stem of a cauliflower and takes on a very mild flavor easily associated with a cruciferous vegetable.   Mostly I’ve been using it as one of my lunch time sautee vegetables.  I have also grilled slices of it with eggplant and topped them both with olive oil and fresh basil.

In this recipe the kohlrabi is cubed and cooked casserole style.  If you don’t eat dairy, look away now.  I can’t think of a good substitute for the cream.  I have made this several times and have mixed in other vegetables with the kohlrabi with good results.  Any sturdy vegetable would work well.  I have also mixed in raw chopped collard greens.  Another idea is to top the whole thing with cheese (such as parmesan) and finish it off in the broiler to get a nice browned top.