Catching Up

My seniors are wrapping up their year of classes this week, leaving me with marking and one-on-one sessions with stressed 17 & 18 year olds preparing for the exams that they think determine the rest of their lives...

Thus, I'm worn out at the end of every day, so my evenings (save for Monday's belly dancing class) are usually filled with relaxation activities: reading books, getting massages (once), hanging out in the hammock (often, now that the weather is getting nicer), and watching light entertainment programs.

But, amidst all the stress-dodging and rest-seeking, I've also been eating really well. I'm sticking to meat and vegetables, with lots of animal fat and coconut oil, and I'm even seeing some progress via the scales. I am enjoying solid energy levels, and have added a new fun activity to my day - hula hooping! I've only done it a couple of times, to minimise boredom, and I can spin the hoop almost 100 times around my waist! I bought a weighted, large hoop, with red and silver holographic stripes, and I feel like a circus princess!

Here are a few of the delicious meals I've been enjoying, for your viewing pleasure:







And then there was the 900g grass-fed rib-eye steak we found at St. Jude's Cellars in Fitzroy, easily devoured by the beau and I after a long day of walking in the sunshine, book hunting, and carrying around a brand-new, weighted hula hoop!


Steak go bye-bye :)


GGP go bye-bye!

How to Ruin Free-Range Chicken

I wasn't interested in participating in Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint Challenges this year, but when he announced his Fast Food Nation challenge, it piqued a memory...

Driving around my neighbourhood, I saw a sign for Red Rooster (sort of like KFC, but they do fish and chips and things as well), advertising a new 'Simply Free Range' chicken source/menu. So, when I read about the contest, I thought I'd go check it out... You know, in the name of primal research.


Driving thru', I was disappointed to see that the free-range chicken options were limited to a wrap (with or without cheese and bacon), a burger (with or without cheese and bacon), and a salad. I was hoping to get a whole free-range chicken, being the most primal option, but no dice. Next best thing - salad. Oh, you're out of veggies? Great...


So I went for the wrap with cheese and bacon, figuring I could unwrap it and enjoy the meat and veg.


Mmm, a few pieces of lettuce, some green goo which was supposedly avocado, a slimy sweet sauce (not mentioned on the menu, else I would have asked for it to be excluded), a shred of bacon, and a couple of pieces of chicken. The items were stuck together with a gluey substance which apparently was cheese... And all this set me back the tidy sum of $7.50.

Expensive, and yuck. I could have bought a whole free range chicken for not much more than that price, and then I wouldn't have been restricted to just the practically fat-free breast meat either! Or I could buy a kilogram of bacon for $8...

So, in many ways it's good that Red Rooster is supporting free-range chicken farms, but the current options are by no means primal-friendly. Baby steps, I guess...

Recipes: Seafood? Eat It!

I like seafood.

A lot.

Some types, I would go as far as saying I love.

You probably know that I quite like sashimi.

I get excited when I see something like this arrive at my table:


But when I see the $65 price tag, I'm less excited.

Fortunately, I know how to cook, am not afraid of making mistakes, and can usually figure out how to do fancy things using local produce and a few vaguely sharp knives.



Much better! And sooo much cheaper, despite being enough to feed four people! All wild-caught seafood, and organic vegetables - I doubt the same could be said of the 'starter platter' from Kobe Jones I first pictured.

My salmon sashimi platter was the generous starter for one of the multiple dinner parties I've hosted in the past week since holidays began. I've been having a lot of fun with seafood, especially given that the warm Spring weather is finally starting to appear on occasion, and soon it will be BBQ time!

Here are a couple of recipes from the 'I'll be making this again' file amassed over the past week:

Pancetta-Wrapped Scallops



Ingredients (per person):

75g fresh scallops
50g pancetta (as flat and long as possible)
Wooden skewers (soaked)

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven or BBQ to moderately hot (around 200 deg C)

2. Wrap one or two scallops in one slice of pancetta, and thread onto a skewer to hold the pancetta in place. If your pancetta is flat and long, you can simply roll it up around the scallop, like this:


If your pancetta is more of an oval shape, you will need to fold in the edges like you were wrapping a gift:



3. If you are using a BBQ, just throw the completed skewers on the hot plate (you could use the grill, but fat will drip and you don't want flare-ups).

If you are roasting them in the oven (like I do), I would encourage you to lie the skewers across the top of a cake pan so that all sides of the pancetta can crisp up. You can reserve the fat that is lost for cooking your veggies in!


4. Bake/BBQ for around 10 - 15 minutes, until pancetta is crisp.

Serve with pancetta-wrapped asparagus!



As an intermission, here's the way I prepare most meals nowadays, including a lot of my seafood:

Ingredients:

Meat, in bite-sized chunks (diced beef, lamb, chicken, or whole baby octopus, prawns, scallops)
Vegetables that are amenable to sautéing - onion, cabbage, capsicum, mushrooms, tomato, zucchini, spinach etc.
Coconut oil, butter, or lard/tallow.

Method:

1. Heat oil in a large frying pan.
2. Add items that take a while to cook (meat, onion). Stir.
3. Add items that take less time to cook (cabbage, mushrooms). Stir.
4. Add items that take very little time to cook (zucchini, tomato, spinach). Stir.
5. When everything's cooked, sprinkle with a little salt & pepper, and serve in a big ungainly bowl. Scarf it all down, contentedly.


Baby octopus, red cabbage & mushroom sauté.


Chopped chicken thigh, asparagus, button squash, and mushroom sauté.

And that's my typical meal. Admittedly, this has primarily been the norm whilst our grill has been broken and lacking in replacement. Now I have a new grill, but I can't seem to be arsed to go back to seared meat. I don't see the point of cooking the meat separately when I'm sautéing veggies anyway. But this way I can cook fish quickly and easily, and make crispy bacon...

Speaking of cooking fish, the beau won't eat raw salmon, so I had to find a fun new way to cook salmon for him that was dairy-free, and did not require a grill. The idea of dry-baking the fish in the oven turned my stomach, but I found a way to add flavour and maintain the moistness that was practically effortless. It was eaten so quickly, I barely had time to snap a photo.

Baked Salmon with Spinach & Tomato

Ingredients (per person):

1 salmon fillet, skin on or off
1 roma tomato
1 handful of fresh baby spinach
A few fresh basil leaves

Method:

1. Preheat oven to moderate (around 175 deg C)

2. In a baking dish, place salmon fillets side by side, leaving no gaps.

3. Sprinkle with basil and spinach leaves, and place whole tomatoes on top.

4. Bake until tomatoes are shriveled and starting to blacken. This took around 20 minutes in my temperamental oven.


Check to make sure salmon fillets are cooked through. If they aren't, return dish to oven for another five minutes and check again.

5. Once salmon fillets are cooked as desired, go to town on those tomatoes - rip them apart and smear their oozy inner goodness across the top of the fillets and leaves.


Look at that - DIY tomato sauce!

6. Scoop out fillets with topping intact, and serve on a bed of tasty veggies.


(Apologies for the dodgy photo - the guests were getting demanding after the aroma of roasted tomatoes filled the air!)

So that's what I've been cooking! This past week has been devoted to socialising, since I see so few members of my social circle other than work colleagues during the teaching term. I was also sick with violent gastroenteritis a week ago, which put a crimp in my plans, but also meant I pulled off an effortless 40 hours fast! I'm tracking my calories at the moment, but being a bit liberal with my carbs from veggies. Fruit & nuts are still my danger zone, so I'm avoiding them entirely, and dairy is confirmed to be the cause of my acne, so it's truly off the menu once more. So I'm on meat, eggs and veg, and couldn't really be happier. My gut is really flat, despite the sag of flab hanging in the front - yum. I'm going to be really careful for a while, since I'd like to be able to wear a proper belly dancing costume if I get asked to perform later in the year, and I'm a long way from that point.

Other than friends and fatness considerations, I've scaled back my hygiene routines given that it's the holidays. I'm trying out a no 'poo regime, and I have baking powder on standby if a just-water approach doesn't cut it. I'm using coconut oil as my facial moisturiser, though I use a basic astringent wipe to remove my make-up first. My make-up is organic and uses few harsh agents, though if my dairy-acne clears up I may be able to go without anything. Right now I just use tinted moisturiser and a powder to conceal spots and dark shadows under my eyes. I'm also getting as much sun as I can, now that the days are starting to break past the 20 deg C ceiling. I'm about to head to the farm for a few days, so I'll be doing lots of walking in the serene bushlands near my parents' property, though I want to wear my Vibrams so will stay out of the scrub - snake country. Walking along the gravel road is peaceful enough - traffic is very rare. I usually walk along singing my head off to any wildlife that might care to listen. A perfect way to unwind the tensions of this year - fingers crossed it doesn't rain!!

Keeping Up To Date

If, perchance, there are any Australian teachers/students reading my blog, they will understand when I say that the year is getting to its very pointy end and it's not surprising that updating the blog is slipping further and further down my priority list. School holidays begin in 68 hours (who's counting?) although I will also be involved in work things during our break, since my seniors will be finishing up their scheduled classes shortly thereafter. Apart from those small obligations, I will be resting free and easy for the break, with a trip to the farm, lots of cultural activities (such as finally going to the Titanic Exhibition at the Melbourne Museum, woohoo!), and hopefully some gorgeous spring weather to lap up. With some more playtime available, I hope to also have some fun in the kitchen, getting some fresh and zingy spring recipes ready for party season!

In the meantime, here's a quick run-down of my latest shenanigans:

I'm currently trying to crack down on my weight issues by sticking to a meat-based diet once more, adding some veggies with dinner if I want them. Today I had beef sausages for breakfast and lunch, some salmon sashimi when I arrived home from work, and then a BAS of silverbeet, onion, garlic and mushrooms, sautéed in butter. Since a more relaxed approach to carb intake and calorie consumption is clearly not working out for me, despite going dairy- and nut-free on top of everything else, I'm getting stricter. No fruit, carbs under 50g (including fibre), and calories under 2000kcal except on more active days. I'm trying to keep my fat intake around 150g per day, which translates to me trying to keep my protein intake at a reasonable level. Time to defrost some lamb chops...

On Mondays, I have my belly dancing class. I'm still really loving it, and am transitioning into learning extended choreography with the girls who have been training for 6+ years! It's a little full-on since they don't teach me the dances step by step; I'm expected to just follow along and do as much as I can. It'll be different when they're not preparing to perform in a festival, and are learning a new dance from scratch. I've bought a few DVDs so that I can learn choreographed sequences from those, for my own enjoyment. IF only I had a more dance-friendly space in my house - the TV is in a room with a low-hanging lampshade - not terribly conducive to arm flourishes!

I'll be skipping meals when I'm not hungry, and I plan to occasionally fat fast through a meal (i.e. take a hit of coconut oil instead of cooking up a full meal). Hopefully these revised efforts, on top of what I hope to be a healed and balanced metabolic/hormonal system, will help kick-start my fat loss once again. I'm sick of being so fat! I want to be able to wear a sexy belly dancing costume, for one thing! A sparkly, embellished bra, with a low-slung hip scarf to match... Yum! At least now I have a bit more of a goal than just to look good naked - if I want to perform on stage, I want to wear the real gear and look hot! I want my shimmies to look controlled and sexy, not like jiggly fat wobbles! I want my 'fish'/'camel' stomach/spine waves to look smooth and gorgeous, not like I'm sticking my gut and my butt out in counterpoint!

I've been running (but not leading) a yoga session each week at my school, and this being the last week of term means this Wednesday is also our last yoga session. I don't think we'll be continuing next term, since attendance has been varied thanks to it being the pointy end of the year, so I'll be going back to my yoga vodcasts and leading myself through sessions at home. If I join the gym where my belly dancing sessions are held (the classes are past of their group fitness offerings despite the teacher being a proper belly dance teacher - I don't feel like I'm paying enough for her expertise! - and cost about the same amount per session as I would pay for a weekly membership there), then I could go to their evening yoga sessions, and maybe even some Pilates, which I used to love. They have a pool, too...

Simon Says...

Stephan Guyenet says... Dogen Zenji says... The world is complex, as our are bodies and our environments, so keep your nutritionism and reductionism in context.

Pål Jåbekk & Matt Stone say... Think positive! It's good for you!

Ned Kock from Health Correlator says... When we consider the China Study data, we see wheat is associated with some pretty evil stuff, and rice isn't great either, but it's hard to define why...

Mark Sisson says... You don't have to live with joint pain!

JP from Primal Journal says... Carbohydrates in large quantities and from bad sources are to be avoided.

& Girl Gone Primal says... Ciao!

Recipe: Pizza Cake (it's a piece of cake to make!)

I was going to make a cauliflower pizza, but I'm not doing dairy and I suddenly could not be bothered cooking the crust and then loading up toppings... Too complicated for my tired frame of mind! Solution? I've created something existing in the gray area between a cauliflower pizza and a frittata - it's a Pizza Cake!


Ingredients:

1/2 head cauliflower, riced
4 eggs
2 cups pizza toppings: ham or bacon, capsicum, tomato, basil, onion, pepperoni, salt & peppers, etc.

Method:

1. Preheat oven to moderate-high. Line and lightly grease a baking tray or pan - preferably one with a lip.

2. If you can be bothered (it's worth it), lightly fry all suitable pizza toppings in a small amount of bacon grease or coconut oil to develop the flavours.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine cauliflower, eggs, and pizza toppings.

4. Pour mixture into prepared pan, and spread into desired shape. The thickness of mine was about 3cm.

5. Bake in oven until edges have browned and cake is cooked through. My oven took about half an hour to completely cook it through. Spongy goodness!


Serve with whatever you like - it can be the veggie portion of a meat meal, or the meat with a salad. One quarter of a cake is a good serving size if it's part of a meal, but the beau and I easily demolished half each without anything else to eat. I look forward to experimenting with other variations: curried chicken pizza cake, ground beef and tomato pizza cake... Yum!

Shimmy & Shake!

I think I may have been born a dancer but in the wrong kind of body - at least going by today's rail-thin dancer physique. I used to dance quite a bit in my younger years, and when I was a University student I spent a lot of time in group fitness classes, dancing around, punching the air, doing high kicks... You get my drift. Boppy cardio, nothing muscular - even my legs wouldn't really feel a burn.

Since discovering the importance of strength training and the down-side of endurance exercise, I had been playing around with HIIT, Tabata, CrossFit... And, to be honest, I found them all pretty boring. Grunting and sweating and stop-starting? Bleh.

So I started playing around with the more-lyrical-yet-bloody-difficult art of Yoga, which I'm really enjoying, but it too started to get a bit 'samey'.


Enter belly dancing.

I've only been to two classes, but I'm apparently a natural, and everything just feels natural - my body was meant to move this way. It's still hard work, especially on the always-bent legs, always-raised arms, and always-undulating abs. It's great for back flexibility, and reverses the tension I build up in my shoulders and neck when I spent long periods at my desk.

However, the real delight I gain from the classes is the deep-rooted, primal urge I feel when performing the movements. There's something absolutely instinctual about this manner of moving. It's nowhere near the airy-fairy feeling of ballet and aerobics - this sensation is rooted in the earth, and my head is flooded with feminine imagery and feminine connections.

Another bonus - having boobs and bum is actually a bonus, since they emphasise my smaller waist as I shake and drop my hips and shimmy my shoulders! There are two twiglets in my class, and you really can't see what they're trying to do. It's all about the figure 8 - and I'm not talking about the movement!

I could push myself to exercise even if I wasn't enjoying it, since I know how important activity is for health - but why force yourself to do something you don't love? Belly dancing doesn't feel like work - actually, it feels more like sex. ;) And with the mad group of girls I'm dancing with on Mondays, that's the usual topic of conversation! Without over-romanticising the practice, I think belly dancing is the closest I'll get to the way traditional societies operate: women have their activities and rituals, the tribal instincts drive interactions, there's a fire for dancing around, and many reasons to celebrate...

And - let's face it - most guys would rather watch a curvy woman with an exposed midriff shimmy and shake than some boyish twig bounce around in glo-mesh. It's just natural.

Recipe: Chunky Chicken Burgers

Inspired by the new free-range chicken mince available at the local supermarket, I figured I'd get my hands dirty and make a variation of my usual burgers with a lighter, spicier finish. I thought my days of enjoying chicken were over, but these guys will be entering regular rotation!


Ingredients:

500g chicken mince
4 eggs
1 red capsicum, diced
1 small fennel bulb (1/2 cup when diced)
2T chopped basil (I prefer fresh, but didn't have any)
2T chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves, chopped finely
1T paprika
1t salt (optional)
3T-ish almond flour

Optional extras I'll be playing with next time around:
Diced bacon, pre-fried
Chopped onion, pre-fried
Sun-dried tomatoes
Curry powder or cumin


(Check out the eggs above - they're from Swampy, my raw milk supplier from Warrnambool. His hens haven't been laying for the past couple of months, but a cartoon greeted me when I went to my organic grocery last week. They're fabulous - and they still have dirt on them!)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 175°C. Line a baking tray with foil, and grease lightly with coconut oil.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients except almond flour. Stir until all items are combined.


3. On a clean, dry, flat surface, sprinkle almond flour in a thin layer, ready to coat burger patties.

4. Warning - chicken mince is very sticky! Using your hands if you dare, section the mixture into desired portions, and roll and squish into patties. Place patties onto the floured surface, pressing lightly and flipping so that both sides have a light coating. This is not meant to be as dense as other coatings, i.e. that of my Fried Chicken Fingers.

5. Place coated burgers onto prepared tray, and place into oven.


6. Bake until edges begin to brown and meat is cooked through.


Serve atop romaine/cos lettuce (if you have large enough leaves or small enough burger patties, you can use the leaves as a wrap for holding the burger). The beau took his with slices tomato, shredded cheese, and a little tomato sauce. I would also be more than tempted to top future burgers with a fried egg, maybe some cooked onion slices, and some homemade mayonnaise... Yum!