THU Awesome Cheesy Sausage Potato Pie

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is pretty nifty.  It’s in the same vein as Brussel’s Sprouts Awesome, seeing as I’m not sure how I never made this before now and how I ever lived without it.

Ingredients

  1.   1 large sweet potato, cubed into 1/4″-1/2″ cubes
  2.   3 large egss, beaten
  3.   10 oz sage breakfast sausage
  4.   1 small onion, diced up super ass small
  5.   8 oz monterey jack cheese
  6.   2 tablespoons basil (fresh is better, dried is ok)
  7.   3 tablespoons vegetable broth
  8.   4 slices of pepperoni, trust me, only 4, no less, no more
  9.   3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese
  10.  2 cups spinach

Recipe

  1.   Sweet potatoes into a pie pan and bake for 15 minutes at 375 in a preheated oven
  2.   Saute the onion with the vegetable broth and sausage.  Keep going until there is no liquid left, then pull off and drain well to get all that sausage grease off
  3.   Put back into a pan with the spinach and saute until the spinach is soft and mixed in.
  4.   Add the basil, stir and cook for another 3-4 minutes on medium, with lid on is better
  5.   Dice up the pepperoni and put in a food processor with your block of Monterrey Jack cheese, pulse until the cheese is crumples and there are little red specks everywhere (that’s the pepperoni.  It’s being used as a spice in this dish)
  6.   Take out your sweet potatoes, sprinkle with Parm cheese.  Cover them with the sausage-onion mixture.  Evenly poor over the beaten eggs.  Then evenly spread your cheese mixture back over the whole thing.  Put back into the oven at 375
  7. Bake about 20 minutes or until the whole thing is nice and bubbly and the cheese is all Melty and awesome.
  8. This should easily feed 4 people and have 2 servings for leftovers for work.

This is super yummy.   This is ridiculously paleo friendly and is phase 3 (being generous here) for us LTL types.  For a slightly healthier version, use turkey sausage.

 

Cheesy Vegetable Soup with Balsamic Sauteed Crimini’s

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is the last soup that I will be posting until after summer.    After all, hot simmering soup just screams hot sunny days doesn’t it.  Whatever, more soup this fall!!  It’s a little weird in its preparation.

Ingredients

  1.   32 ounces (divided into 4 8 ounce cups) vegetable broth
  2.   1 tablespoon of minced garlic
  3.   1/2 cup minced onion
  4.   2 cups chopped celery
  5.   1 entire riced cauliflower
  6.   4 ounces of shredded white cheddar cheese
  7.   4 ounces of shredded swiss cheese
  8.   1/2 cup chopped broccoli stem
  9.   8 ounces (divided into 4 2 ounce cups) of water, yes, the amount is important.
    10. 16 ounces of crimini mushrooms, cut into small slices.
    11. 1 tablespoon of olive oil
    12.  1 teaspoon of dried chives (that’s the green stuff in the picture)
    13. 6 tablespoons of Basamic Vinegar

    Recipe  (This is the weirdest recipe I’ve ever done, trust me)

    1.  Into a small pan, put 1 of the veggie broth cups and 1 of the water cups into the pan use this liquid to steam the hell out of the broccoli stem.
    2.  Remove from the steam, leave the liquid.
    3.  Add 1 more part of the veggie broth and water into the liquid and bring to a new boil, steam the hell out of the celery, and then remove and leave the liquid.
    4.  Add the remaining liquid and the remaining veggie broth and water to a bigger pan, bring to a boil, add all the remaining ingredients, except for the cheese.  Lid and reduce heat to medium, simmer/boil for 10 minutes.
    5.  Take your mushrooms and olive oil and balsamic vinegar and saute until the mushrooms are browned and soft (like sautéed mushrooms look)
    6.  Remove the lid of the pan and look at your veggies.  Take a wand mixer and puree it all into a giant pool of veggie yummy.  It should be pretty smooth and there should be no chunks.  It will be a slightly unappealing green yellow color (unless you like veggies, then you love that color)
    7.  Reduce to a light simmer, you want there to still be heat and liquid loss but not a lava-like splatter of veggie goodness all over your kitchen.
    8.  Pour in all the cheese in and start stirring it up.  When the cheese is completely mixed in, the soup is done.  I would suggest letting it cool to near edible levels then give it a good stir before serving, but it’s your tongue.

    This should make between 6-8 servings of soup, depending up on how you like your soup.  There is protein in the form of cheese and purines in the mushroom.  If you want a cheesier flavor, you can add a cheesier or stronger cheese  Gouda would work well, so would Gruyère.

Brussels Sprouts Awesome – Fall Edition

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is a very similar recipe to the Broccoli Sprouts Awesome recipe.  The difference is that it focuses on some more Autumnish flavors, meaning Thanksgiving leftovers are ingredients here.

Ingredients

  1.     3 cups shredded brussels sprouts. (You can either take a long time to do it yourself, or pick up two bags at TJ’s or whereever)
  2.     5 ouces of diced Thanksgiving turkey (or turkey breast if you don’t have leftover turkey)
  3.     2 ounces of unroasted pepitos (these are shelled pumpkin seeds)
  4.     2 ounces of monterey jack cheese (shredded works well, sometimes I dice it into 1/2″ by 1/2″ squares, that’s fun too)
  5.     2 tablespoons of vegetable broth
  6.     1 tablespoon of smoked paprika

Recipe

  1.    Put the pepitos in a large frying pan on medium heat.  This is a way to get some of the oils out of them, which gives it a bit of a nutty flavor in the overall dish.  The way you can tell if they are done or not is to smell them.  If you are about 2 feet above the pan and it smells nutty, it’s done.  If you are the bathroom and they smell nutty, they are overdone.  Toss them and start over.  There is no timing this as pepitos are not uniform in size.  They are done when the smallest one is done, not when the largest one is done.  You would rather have 75% underdone pepitos and 25% perfectly done pepitos, than the other way around.
  2.     When you smell the nutty smell, pour the veggie broth, turkey and paprika all in.
  3.     Saute all for about 3 minutes, then add all the brussels sprouts in.  (you see why you needed a medium saucepan)
  4.     Brussels sprouts are done when they are done. Mine usually take about 8 minutes of stirring fairly often.  But brussels sprouts can be finicky and are awful when overcooked.  Do your best.  They do not need to be soggy to be done.  A bit of crunch is desirable.
  5.   Cut the heat and stir in your cheese.  Some people stir it in to melt it, some people cover it and put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.  Either way is fine.  I like to stir it in so it gets all melty and awesome.

Let me know what you think of this variation.  We cook with brussels sprouts a lot and find them to be a hearty and great substitute for a starch in a dish.  This dish also works well with cauliflower as the base as well.  (Riced of course)

Italian Veggie Stew with Portobello Mushrooms

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is a basic italian stew that is super hearty while being great for cleanse week!  Cleanse away!!

Ingredients

  1.     1 can of organic tomatoes, drained and rinsed
  2.     6 medium stalks of celery, cut into 1/2 inch chunks
  3.     2 medium onions, one diced fine, the other chopped into 1/2 inch chunks
  4.     2 Portobello caps, cut into 1/2 inch strips, set aside
  5.     2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar and another 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar
  6.     1.5 cups organic vegetable broth
  7.     1 teaspoon each of the following:  thyme, oregano, basil (i used 2 teaspoons), minced garlic, celery flake
  8.     1 bay leaf
  9.     1 pinch of dried chives or dried scallions (for garnish, gotta look pretty!)

Recipe

  1. Preheat an oven to 450 degrees.
  2. Combine vegetable broth, onions, celery and spices into a medium pan and put on medium heat for about 5 minutes
  3.  While that is coming to temp, place your mushrooms on a pan and drizzle with 2 tablespoons balsamic and put in a hot, hot, hot oven to roast.
  4.  The soup base should be warmed at this point, but not boiling yet.  Add the tomatoes and crank the heat to high to bring to boil!
  5.  Add the spices and bay leaf and cover for about 10 minutes.
  6.  Pull out the mushrooms (which should be roasted) and se aside to cool a little.
  7.  Check on your stew, it should be boiling.  Pull the lid off and add the vinegar.  Stir briskly until you cannot smell the vinegary smell anymore.  (A lot of times I treat Balsamic like wine, you cook it to get the alcohol/vinegar out.  What you are left is a less acidic version of the flavor you wanted).
  8.  Pull it off the heat and set aside for 5 minutes, lidded.  It should come together.  If you want it thicker, leave the lid off.
  9. Put in a bowl, put the mushrooms on top, real pretty like, and add the chives/scallions

Different than usual, this recipe really only makes 2 servings (because I hate reheating Portobellos) but it’s pretty true to multiply out if you want more servings.  I like this one and its pretty easy.  Please give me feedback and let me know what you think of this one.  We enjoyed it and it was hearty and filling, which is sometimes missing in a detox or cleanse week.

Rice’d Cauliflower and Why Is It Awesome?

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Anyone who has looked at any of our recipes, especially in the last few months, have been seeing a lot of riced cauliflower.  I found myself, in our semi-paleo, mostly gluten-free cooking lives missing a couple of things that were staples only a few short years ago.  To put it mildly, there are some things that quinoa cannot replace (and for me that list is long).  We wanted to find something that could go with cheese, be under chili, be used in asian food, be used as a main dish if it required it…all of the things that I missed about rice.  I am not saying that you should not eat rice, except white rice, don’t eat that, but whole brown rice is fine.  So here is how it happened:

One night, we were cooking in our tiny kitchen and were trying to figure out what to put with some salmon that had a soy sauce and maple flavored glaze on it (trust me it’s awesome, I will post that the next time we make it).  We wanted rice, but we were trying to be good, and quinoa was a bad choice here because of awfulness.

“What about using the cauliflower from the cauliflower crust pizza?”, his beautiful wife asked?

“You mean, like rice or something?”, replied the spectacular bald (by choice) man.

“Sure”, she said sweetly, with musicality not usually found in a voice.

“I don’t know, that’s kind of weird”, said the dashing handsome fellow.

Or something like that.

At any rate, we thought we had come up with something.  We were wrong, and very late to the party.  But, I know that we are not the only ones, simply based on the emails I have gotten about this.  So here is some info.

1 cup of cauliflower rice contains:  0.6g fat (0%), 45mg sodium (1.5%), 459mg Potassium (12%), 3g Dietary Fiber (8%, again we use higher fiber standards here at THU), 3.8g protein (6% – please see my post about trace protein in vegetables), and approximately 3% of daily calcium, 100% daily Vitamin C, 6% daily Iron, 18% daily Vitamin B-6, 6% daily Magnesium, 20% daily Vitamin K, 6% daily Phosphorous, 12% daily Manganese and a Glycemic Load of 2 (a typical daily target is 100).  These are all based on a traditional 2000 calorie diet, we typically use higher nutritional standards here, but this is for the normal people out there.  It also helps to cut down cytokine production and reduces inflammation because of the high amount of antioxidants (Vitamin C, beta-cryptoxanthin, cinnamic acid, ferulic acid, kaempferol) and is known to be a great source of hard to pronounce phytochemicals that can provide health benefits for people who suffer from Crohn’s Disease, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, Rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

White rice does not do any of that.

The other awesome part of cauliflower rice is that it is very friendly texture wise based on what you want.  I typically do not even cook it but put it on the bottom of anything that is sauce-rich, because the heat from the sauce with warm and soften it without destroying all the benefits.  If mush is your preference, then you can microwave it easily.  It stir-fries nicely and in about the same amount of time that regular cooked rice does.  It packs such a nutritional wallop that I feel like anything I add it to becomes healthier, which it does.  Plus, you are adding a cup of nutrient rich vegetables and removing a cup of nutrient poor random carbs.  It only makes sense.

Here is how I make it. Take notes, because this is complex as all get out.

Ingredients

  1.  1 head of cauliflower

Recipe

  1.  Remove the big stemmy part and all of the green leaves.
  2.  Break into small enough parts to fit into a food processor.
  3.  Turn food processor on and run until there are no pieces larger than a pencil eraser.
  4. Put into a bowl and use however

A normal head of cauliflower should make 3-4 cups of “rice”.  Quick note:  Cauliflower will typically keep 2-3 weeks in the not destroyed form.  But it will only keep for 3-4 days once you rice it, so keep that it in mind.

Enjoy.  If you have any awesome ideas that you are using it for, let me know.  Also let me know what you think of this article in the comments below or on Facebook.

Egg Muffins

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Egg Muffins are great.  More importantly outside of being awesome and tasty, they make people want to measure everything happy in their warm place.  Basically, egg muffins, like soup, is an equation.

Take the ones pictured for instance, to make twelve of them.

Ingredients

  1.  12 eggs, beaten till liquid and slightly frothy, the main thing is you don’t want anything to make them harder to pour
  2. 4 ounces of diced orange pepper, measured with a scale
  3. 2 cups cooked spinach (yields far less)
  4. 4 ounces of Feta cheese, measured with a scale
  5. KEEP EVERYTHING SEPARATE

Look at them, do you see anything in common.  Yup they are divisible easily into 12.  For example, each muffin will consist of 1 egg, 1/3 ounce diced orange pepper, 4 ounces of uncooked spinach, and 1/3 feta cheese.  But it would be a superb pain in the but to make that one muffin, so you batch cook.

Recipe (there will be some things in this that look weird)

  1.  Spray a muffin pan with non-stick spray.  Don’t worry it won’t touch your food, it’s for heat conductivity.
  2.  Put a muffin cup in each space.  I prefer to get the pretty awesome aluminum foil ones like these so that the heat conducts well and you get some crunchy edges.  Sounds weird, but hey it’s my recipe.
  3. Pour roughly 1/12 of your egg mix into the cups.  You may have to practice to get it right.  I say add a little bit at the beginning, you can always go back.
  4. Add 1/3 ounce diced turkey, 1/3 feta cheese and about , 1/12 of the spinach.  The spinach is the weird one, I actually spread it out on a cutting board after its cooked and divide it into 12 piles.  You may not be this anal or weird about it, but I am.   I suggest adding the cheese last (I should have said that earlier).
  5. Bake in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes or so.
  6. Take out and let rest until you can easily get the cups out without burning yourself, about 20 minutes
  7. Before packaging them, two things:  remove the cups (don’t reuse them) and let them come to room temperature before attempting to store them.  They become a condensation making mess in the container they are in if you put them in there too hot.

These are good and pretty easy to make.  1 of them goes well with a bunch of veggies, 2 of them is a meal (with a bunch of veggies on the side).  They travel well, reheat well and are quite tasty.

Now, you can substitute anything in these.  I like 2 veggies with feta, or 1 veggie and turkey with cheddar, the point is you can do whatever you want with them.  They are quite versatile.

Creole Shrimp and “Rice”

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is quite the uncomplicated recipe, but it ends up being awesome due to a simple trick of resting it.

Ingredients

  1. 20 ounces of raw and peeled jumbo shrimp
  2. 1 medium green pepper chopped
  3. 1 medium onion chopped
  4. 3 8″ stalks of celery chopped
  5. 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
  6. 2 tablespoons dried lemon peel
  7. 1 large cauliflower, riced
  8. 2 tablespoons salt, yes it seems like a lot, but wait for it
  9. 2 tablespoons minced garlic
  10. 1 tablespoon “Penzey’s Cajun” spice mix.  (Now, we use pretty much only stuff from Penzey’s, but I assume that any Cajun spice would work for this.  You can get this particular spice here.  It’s delightful.  We do not receive any compensation for hawking their stuff by the way.)

Recipe

  1. Take the onion, pepper, and celery and put in a skillet with the salt and oil.  Sweat this on medium heat until the onions are translucent, should take about 10 minutes or so.  (This is why you are using so much salt, when you cook salt without water, the lack of alkilinity in the mixture causes the salt to break down into its component minerals, thus seems less salty.)
  2. Add the lemon peel and garlic at this point and turn to medium high heat.
  3. Add the shrimp and remaining spices.  Give a couple of good tosses to coat it all and cover for about 2 minutes.  Repeat this process until the stuff is all cooked through, mainly the shrimp.
  4. Remove all of this from the pan and put into a bowl or dish and cover with foil for about 15 minutes.  Everything should come down to room temperature.  This is a good secret in a lot of shrimp cooking.  It will finish cooking and not be rubbery.
  5. While that is happening, take the entire riced cauliflower and put in the same skillet (hope you used a big enough one, if not you have an extra pan to wash, huh.) Increase the heat to high stirring often, the goal is to heat the cauliflower without losing the crunch and without it becoming soggy, this should not really take more than 5 or so minutes.
  6. Take of the heat and combine the shrimp mixture with the cauliflower.
  7. Now, you have two choices and they depend upon how big your dish and skillet are.  I did not mix it all together in the skillet because I had a really big bowl.  I mixed it in that.  If your skillet is big enough, you can mix it there.

We made this for a dinner for a couple of friends and it was a big hit.  The amazing thing about it is that it needs 2 tablespoons of oil and 20 ounces of shrimp and amply fed 5 people (counting myself twice).  That means that each person took in 1/2 tablespoon of oil, 4-5 ounces of shrimp, and 2-2.5 cups of veggies here.  That’s awesome.  And I do not want to hear about how it’s not “Creole” it’s Cajun blah blah blah.  There is citrus and slight caramelization on the veggies, not cajun things.  Don’t give me any crap people   🙂  Please try it out and let me know what you think of it.

Southwest Chicken Chili

Posted on by Sam Boyd

This is a milder and tangier chili recipe meant to be better for summer.  I find that a robust chili is better in the winter, this one feels more summery to me.

Ingredients:

  1.  16 ounce of chicken breasts cooked off and set aside to rest completely (reserve any liquid that came off)
  2. 3 cans of diced tomatoes washed and drained
  3. 2 cans of light red kidney beans, washed and drained.
  4. 3 medium onions chopped into 1/2 inch chunks
  5. 6 cloves of garlic, minced
  6. 10-12 mini peppers sliced into 1/4 slices
  7. 1 teaspoon of the following:  celery seed, coriander, cumin, white pepper, lemon peel
  8. 1 tablespoon of the following:  paprika, dried chives, black pepper
  9. 2 tablespoons of the following:  tomato paste, salt, lime juice
  10. 3 cups of veggie broth
  11. 1 cup of water

Recipe:

  1.  Put all the veggies in the pot:  onions, tomatoes, peppers, garlic.  Sweat for about 10 minutes on medium heat, stirring often.  If you hear sizzling, turn your heat down a little.
  2. Add the liquid:  veggie broth, water, bring to a boil over medium high heat.  Cover to speed up the process.
  3. When boiling, add the beans and the chicken liquid (yummy, chicken liquid, let’s call it stock instead).
  4. Uncover and keep uncovered until boiling again.  Add the chicken and spices into the liquid and stir vigorously to get the paste all mixed in.
  5. Reduce heat to low, cover and let cook like this for about 30 minutes or so, stirring every so often to keep it from sticking, but not too often as you don’t want to lose your heat.
  6. Turn off the heat and let come to above room temperature.  We use a dutch oven for most soups so it keeps heat for a long time.  I let it sit for about 4 hours, then it’s cool enough to eat.  You know your cookware, so you should do it how you see fit.
  7. I am notorious for undersalting my food, this one is good for me, but you may want more salt in yours.  Do as you wish.

Cajun Chicken with “Rice”

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Ingredients:
1. 8 drumsticks (I use drumsticks or dark meat for this recipe because it provides a stronger chicken flavor. If you are really looking to go lighter, use chicken breasts)
2. 1 head of cauliflower “riced” (this means break it into chunks and put in a food processor until about the same size as rice)
3. 1 can of diced tomatos well rinsed.
4. 3 cloves of garlic, minced.
5. 1 medium onion, minced.
6. 1 teaspoon of the following: paprika, salt, celery seed, garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, oregano, red pepper, caraway, dill, turmeric, cumin, bay, cardamon, basil, marjoram, rosemary and thyme. (Looks like a lot, right. That’s cause it is. Use any decent cajun seasoning that has no sugar in it, that’s what I did. We use Cajun Seasoning from Penzey’s: https://www.penzeys.com/online-catalog/cajun-style-seasoning/c-24/p-351/pd-s)
7. 1 tablespoon dried cilantro
8. 3 tablespoons vegetable broth/chicken broth

Recipe:
1. Clean and wash your chicken, put the 3/4 of the rub on it generously, then put in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until done. Drain off the liquid into a pan, then cover with foil.
2. In the saucepan, add the tomatos to the chicken liquid, bring to a simmer, cover for 10 minutes.
3. Toss the cauliflower in the remainder of the rub and add to the pan with the vegetable broth and recover for another 10 minutes.
4. Take lid off, smell, say yummy.
5. Stir the mixture around until well mixed, then leave uncovered for abot 10 minutes on medium heat.
6. Unwrap your chicken and pour whatever liquid is left onto your “rice”.
7. Put on plate, sprinkle with cilantro, eat.
8. Say yummy again.
This recipe will make approximately 4 servings, each having 2 cups of veggies each with about 3.5-5 ounces of chicken. We ate, two, then packed the other two up for work lunches.

Mango Chicken with Grilled Carrots

Posted on by Sam Boyd

Ingredients:

1.  Between 8-12 chicken drumsticks or breasts

2.  4 Mangoes

3.  1lb carrots, halved, cut into 4 inch pieces

4.  1/2 teaspoon of the following dried seasonings:  pepper, thyme, dill, basil, sage, mustard seed, clove, allspice, star anise, chives and 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, veggie broth

5.  1 tablespoon salt

6.  1 cup hot water

7.  2 teaspoons red wine vinegar, lime juice

8.  10 mini sweet peppers

Recipe:

1.  Combine water, all dried spices and all wet ingredients into a blender/ninja cup and blend until all the spices are shredded

2.  Split this mixture into 1/2 cup batches

3.  Combine 1/2 cup spice mixture and drumsticks into a Ziploc bag to marinade for a few minutes

4.  Take the other half of the spice mix and combine in a new blender cup/ninja cup/whatever will blend with the mangoes, blend until smooth.

5.  Liberally salt your carrots and peppers then  place on indirect heat on the grill, come back inside

6.  Move your Chicken to a bowl, throw away this marinade, you don’t want salmonella

7.  Put chicken on the grill and grill until done (mine took about 18 minutes on medium fire)

8.  Pull your peppers off when you put the chicken on, they will burn otherwise

9.  Cut your peppers into 1/4 inch slices

10.  The carrots should be done about the same time as your chicken.

11.  I pulled the chicken off and put in a bowl with the mango sauce while I got my plates ready

12.  I plated in this order (bottom to top):  carrots, sauce, chicken, sauce, peppers, chives over the top to make it purty.

13.  This made enough to take 2 extras to work.  Enjoy.