Easy Spinach Mushroom Quiche

CSA season is upon us! My roommate and I signed up for every other week share from Kretschmann Farm what does this mean for my cooking and blogging? It means (somewhat) unknown territory. This is not my first time on a CSA, I did one back in Philly, but this CSA is definitely more traditional- the one I did in Philly was more streamlined for city folk. What do I mean by that? well I would say my current CSA is more of the- some times you get a TON of a certain type of veggies. Like this week's share below is super heavy on greens.

1 huge bag of spinach (maybe 8 cups?)

1 even huger bag of mixed greens (about 10 cups)

1 huge head of bibb lettuce (I mean huge)

1 huge box of assorted mushrooms

large bundle of rhubarb (recipe for that up later this week/early next week)

5 large radishes

fresh thyme

fresh basil

fresh rosemary 

1 fresh loaf of seven grain bread (my roommate will eat that)

So comparatively I would say that the one I did in Philly does more to make sure you never end up with so many greens. I'm not complaining, but I am concerned it will go bad before I can use it. And I by mistake (poor planning bought spinach on sale right before our pick up date. So while I'm loving the influx of veg, it truly is a lot to handle. And for 2 people it is far too many greens to just eat salads, so it will be showing up in every meal I eat until it's gone. That brought me to today's recipe of a crustless quiche. The thing about quiche (especially paleo quiche) is that it's pretty easy to make and pretty hard to mess up. You might want more egg or more veg depending on what you like, so just use more veggies and less milk to make it less eggy. Mine came out a little veggie heavy- since I have so much spinach I don't know what to do.

Ingredients:

1-2 cups of mushrooms sliced

2-4 cups of spinach 

6 large eggs

1 tsp baking soda

2 1/2 cups coconut milk

1 tsp thyme- fresh if you have it

1/2 tsp nutmeg

fresh sea salt and black pepper

You could add: cheese, meat (bacon or ham would go great I think)

Steps:

Preheat oven 350F

Since I have so much spinach to start I took 3 cups of spinach and my eggs, coconut milk, and baking soda and put them in the blender for a short period of time. Ideally I only wanted my spinach blended a little, but my blender is crazy fast and I ended up very diced, but that's okay it just made a very green quiche.

I used my large rectangle Pyrex and coated the bottom with coconut oil to help my quiche not stick. (you could use a smaller one as mine turned out very flat.

I then poured the egg/spinach mixture in, added the remaining 1 cup of spinach and mushrooms and sort of pushed the mushrooms down so they were coated in egg. If you want meat or cheese add it here.

Next I sprinkled the top with thyme, nutmeg, sea salt and black pepper, and put the casserole dish in the oven.

I ate mine with a slice of smoked salmon 

and a bit of blue cheese crumbles

  - green eggs and salmon?

This is the start of a lot of fresh veggies and fruit blogging based on my CSA so I hope you'll follow along as I get creative and do my best to not let any veggies go bad!

Jerk Chicken Lab #1

So I have been on a hunt for the perfect Jerk seasoning recipe. I have tried like 6 so far, each one has been good in it's own way, none has been perfect. But since I haven't written in a bit (I'll get to that after the recipe) I thought I'd say hello and share one of my most recent that I thought was pretty close to greatness.

Jerk Seasoning:

1 tsp cinnamon 

1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp coconut sugar
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes 

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (if you like it spicy!)
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
salt and pepper
juice of 1 lime

What to put it on? 

I used 2 lbs of chicken leg/thighs and doubled the jerk seasoning recipe because I wanted it really jerky.

I'd like to see it on Shrimp, I think that would be awesome

Steps:
Preheat oven 350F

For mine I used Chicken legs/thighs they seem to always be on sale at Whole Foods and you get a lot of bang for your buck. I don't really like chicken that much, but I find that a good jerk seasoning can make me eat just about anything.

Since I'm not going to eat the skin, I like to peel it back and put the rub under the skin directly on the chicken, then put the skin over it so it kind of locks in the moisture when it cooks. I also then put it on the outside of the skin too. After applying rub I then squeezed limes all over it and let it sit for 10 minutes in the fridge, you could go longer, but I was impatient and hungry. I then placed it in the oven covered in foil for 20 minutes, then removed foil and continued for 25 minutes. Since I do not trust chicken I then put my handy digital thermometer in one of the legs to assure the internal temperature was 165F, it was, so we were ready to go.

I ate some of this chicken just as was with a side of broccoli. Then I took a large portion of the legs and removed all the meat from the bones and put it in a zip lock bag, ready to go protein at a moments notice, throw it in salads, munch on it when you can't figure out what to cook. Simple and delicious.

So where have I been? Remember last month I posted that bold post all about the whole 30. Well it's June now and I am here to tell you I did not do the whole 30 last month. I started off trying. But I had a lot on my plate life wise. I was training for a race. I was studying for my Project Management Certification (which I passed huzzah!). I had to be in Philadelphia for work for over a week. And basically I was just stressed out a lot. So I failed at the whole30, and that's okay, because you can start a new one whenever you want. I let myself have last month and I even ate 2 pieces of bread during the whole month (CRAZY TIMES!) and had a donut from Federal Donuts (WHAT?!) and drank some beer (beer is delicious and I do not regret this choice) but I did this while sticking to a strict running schedule since I'm training for a 10k June 29th. So the end result when I stepped on the scale after eating so out of term for a month? I weigh the same. Yay running! I have written a big long post about running and how I'm doing, but I keep editing it, so eventually I will release it. 

So while I may have not moved my program further from a weight standpoint I do feel like I accomplished a lot running in the past month. I'm up to 4.5miles for my longest run and I feel pretty confident that I can get to 6.2 no problem. As for being paleo, I'm back on course with a small addiction to cheese that I'm still working on. But from a 80% on the diet, 20% misbehavin' I'm doing just fine. 

So I guess the moral is, it's okay to fail sometimes, so long as you keep your longer turn goals in mind- for me, I cheated on my diet but I did not let go of my running goals which I think helped a lot. For instance, in April I ran a total of 13 miles, in May I ran a total of 28.5 miles so clearly I'm doing something right.

Some food (links) for thought

This week I'm studying for my PMP exam and my stress level is through the proverbial roof. So rather than a full blown post I thought I'd just say hello, check in and leave some links here for you to go check out:


So called 'health foods' that are probably killing us
Notice how many of these things are out of the paleo diet. I can honestly say (with the exception of a gluten free treat in a moment of desperation) I haven't had any of these in 10 months and I certainly feel healthier for it. As for gluten free treats- read labels. Can you identify all the ingredients? are they something you are willing to put in your body? Make the decision and move on with your life. That's my process. I read labels on everything, even my dog's food, if I can't identify it, it's out.


7 Ways GMO's are hiding in your food.
Funny the cross over this article has to the first. Not trying to scare anyone, but GMOs are no good for us. Many countries ban them altogether or at least require labeling properly- the US is losing this battle, so be aware- if it does not specifically say organic, it isn't. Unless it's from a local small farm, in which case talk to the farmers, it might be organic but the licensing to be an organic farm is really impossible- you can read about that here.

And so as to not be a complete downer, here's a sweet treat recipe that I would love to have. Vegan Raw Almond Joy bars. These sound delicious but are definitely not part of the Whole 30 which I will talk about more next week. Also if these happened to show up at my house. I would stress eat them all. True Fact.



I'll catch up with everyone next week when I've either passed or failed this PMP exam.

May 1- Whole30 self challenge.

So starting today I am starting my second Whole30 program. What is the whole 30 you ask? Well basically it's a much stricter version of going paleo. You see I've been being 'pretty much' paleo since last July/Aug 2012, and while the results have been great (happiness! losing weight! getting shit done!) when I did my first Whole30 (June/July2012) I lost some weight rapidly, felt even better, and just felt like a friggin' rock star most of the time.

What's different about the Whole30 vs. paleo:
No sweetener of any sort: meaning no honey in my tea
No 'paleoifying' things: so most of the fancy baked goods on my blog are out**
No white potatoes: I avoid these anyway, but do use them as "cheats" on the 80/20 rule- but whole30 means none at all.
No alcohol: we'll see about this one, I am human afterall and it is sitting outside sipping a cocktail weather #ginseason
No grains at all: Again I've been cheating with rice, because sushi is delicious. But I am going to try 30 days of no rice at all, or polenta- this will be difficult, but hey sashimi is great, so I will definitely be doing that.
No dairy: I don't really have dairy on paleo, but I have been known to cheat with occasional blue cheese or goat cheese. So that's out.

Why would I want to do this? Well, it's a bit like food bootcamp for my body. Yes, I've been eating rather well, but if I'm being honest, I could do better, and this is my way of committing myself to do just that.

I know I rarely talk about what this diet has done to change my body, because really I did not start it to lose weight. I just wanted to be healthier because when I started this diet I was an unhealthy person, I was overweight, and often unhappy about everything. 10 months later I've lost and kept off about 40lbs and I spend the bulk of my time happy and sharing life with amazing folks I'm proud to call my friends. I have more weight to lose, but I spent the winter focused on maintaining my weight and trying to get more active even when I wanted to just sit inside and pout about the cold. I put together the photo below to show some before and after shots-

-this was not easy as I have destroyed/untagged almost all proof I was ever overweight. And to be clear, I am still overweight, and even when I get to my goal weight, I'll probably still be overweight then (according to the BMI which is BS), but I will be happy and healthy for my body and my personal goals. What am I doing this year that I wasn't last year? Running, doing improv with Steel City Improv, rock climbing, yoga, and I love trying new things whereas before I was stuck in a major rut. (I was biking this time last year so it's not new, it's just easier now that I'm physically stronger)

As I go into my second Whole 30 I know there are things that will be tough but so worth it. Step one is shopping because if your fridge is full of a bunch of crap, you will eat the crap. It's just like the first day of being paleo, throw the junk away or give it to your friends. You think your friends won't take your half eaten box of whatever, we must have different friends because mine would totally take it off my hands. For me I mainly have honey and all my baking supplies, but they will do fine to sit in my cabinets for 30 days so not much for me to give away. More difficult for me is my penchant for not making food soon enough, then getting cranky and ordering- that's got to stop completely. To succeed at the Whole30 you need to have real food readily accessible at all times. Veggies and meat and nuts and avocados.

Want to read more about Whole30- main website, or Naked Plates helpful breakdown. To be clear I'm not paying to do the actual program, I just follow the guidelines and push myself to follow the rules. I'm hoping the results will be awesome and with this great weather that has finally found us, I can't imagine a better way to celebrate than by eating better and getting outside to ride my bike and run and just kick butt all over the place.

Like to know more? Have a specific question? The comments section is up and running and if you're reading this I'd love to hear from you!

Running and Paleo Chocolate Ice Cream

So I apologize- it's been a little while and I suppose you want to know where I've been. Well I had been training for my first 5k a few weeks back, and then I twisted my ankle in a hole outside my apartment and was pretty distraught that I could not run. I waited, and stayed off it and RICE - (rest ice compression elevation) and finally got back out for a few test runs (literally) and then two weekends ago I ran my first 5k with my sister the dash for donor awareness in Philadelphia (I was there visiting). I'm on the right of the photo. It was great. I still run weird (I'm an asthmatic so I run until I can't really breathe and then I walk until I get my breath back- I prefer sprinting to jogging- I'm weird) my sister thinks it's funny since she's really a runner, but hey you have to start somewhere. I will learn jogging some day when my lungs want to cooperate. Thanks again to Brigid for joining me for my first run it meant a lot to have her there with me!

The photo is of us on the Museum steps right after the finish. My finishing time was 42:12 which for me is about 1min to 1:30 faster than my best practicing pace, so you can imagine I was very proud. From here I intend to train more, run more and maybe even eventually learn how to really run one day. But I can certainly tell you that a year ago  if you had told me I would have my first 5k under my belt I would have been skeptical, so I'm proud with what I've done with the past few months and I thank you for reading my silly recipes and anecdotes along the way. Now on today's recipe!


I've been craving ice cream a lot lately. I believe it has to do with the (sometimes) warm weather. The thought of walking into an ice cream parlor and grabbing a scoop on an ice cream cone sounds dangerously delicious. So rather than break all of my paleo rules in one sitting (sugar, milk, and the cone clearly has gluten and who knows what else!) I decided it was time to scour the web for some good paleo ice cream recipes and find one that works for me.

My recipe ended up using some of PaleOMG's recipe (her's has a lot of awesome add ons go check it out) but I wanted to just keep it simple.

Ice Cream:

2 (14 oz) cans of full fat coconut milk- **

3 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

1/3 cup raw honey

1 tsp fine ground coffee 

1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

Steps:

Add all ingredients to a saucepan over medium heat. Stir until cocoa powder is completely dissolved and incorporated. You don't have to bring it to a boil or anything, you are really just using the heat to assist with breaking down the cocoa powder and melt the honey.

Place saucepan in the freezer until completely cool. At least an hour. **

Pour ice cream ingredients into your ice cream maker and turn on. Follow factory settings. I have the Kitchen Aid stand mixer ice cream maker attachment- it's a dream. You just freeze the bowl part for at least 15 hours, then add all your ingredients with your mixer set to stir, and walk away until you hear clicking, and voila ice cream!

Once the ice cream is started to take form but before it is finished you could add a mixer if you wanted. For example: dark chocolate chopped up, or sunflower seed butter, or almond butter. Then you would have a sort of swirl through your ice cream. I left mine plan so I could add stuff when I eat it. I found it made a lot more than I realized which was great. I'll have it for some time since I only eat a few bites  at a time. It goes great on top of my new Paleo brownie recipe which I'll be posting later this week!

**Notes: Full fat coconut milk vs. low fat so Trader Joe's only sells low fat coconut milk, or coconut cream, I decided to be true to the recipe and for the best possible outcome to go to Whole foods and buy some organic full fat coconut milk. I do think it helped it cream, but then Note 2- I did not let mine chill enough because I was impatient and wanted ice cream, so I'd definitely make sure you wait until your saucepan contents are completely cool until you put them in the ice cream maker or you will not get the best outcome, mine did become like a soft ice cream, and once refrozen is good, but I do believe if I'd been patient the outcome would have been even better.

So as always, it's a learning experience over here. But I'm happy I gave this a try, and it was easier, and cheaper (and made way more) than buying a small pint of coconut ice cream from whole foods- so that is a win in my book!

Pancake lab #2 - the quest continues

Way back in November I wrote a post about the quest for the perfect stack of paleo pancakes. Today I woke up feeling like it was time to try again.

//Personal anecdote------
high highs! ->So this weekend I participated in Startup Weekend Pittsburgh. It was awesome. My team won second place for creating a company called SpareSpace which we hope to continue to build the company and maybe some time in the future you will find yourself using our service. The competition is a 54 hour incubator where teams build around ideas that are pitched on opening night. My team worked very well together and very tirelessly to build a demo and perfect pitch presentation. I didn't sleep much, but mostly because it was hella exciting and I kept falling asleep while thinking about risks we needed to mitigate. This is my life outside of paleo blogging, super cool.

low lows->Anyway on Tuesday after the competition I was walking home still pretty tired, and distracted, and running late, and I saw my neighbor hanging signs up on telephone poles and I was trying to see what they said, and I wasn't watching what I was doing and I sprained my ankle, because I stepped in a hole and twisted it :(. This wouldn't be so devastating if I wasn't supposed to run my first 5k this weekend. Currently I'm icing, and elevating, and staying off of it. But it does not look good. I was excited to write a post and tell you all how I've been training and learning to run with my asthma. Which I have! and some days it almost feels like I know what I'm doing but now I'm a little put down about the ankle and me possibly not running this weekend.
//---end personal anecdote

So the pancakes fall under the 'cheer up' Mary variety as well as the category of try try again. Every time I make paleo pancakes they are different. They are often delicious but different elements of them go different ways for me. They are never the perfect bisquick consistency, or they stick to the pan, or they don't bubble up and you burn then, or the center doesn't cook. etc. etc. etc. The list of ways I've screwed these up goes on and on. But just like tripping in a hole and screwing up your plan to run your first 5k, the only choice I see is to get back up and try again. Because maybe I won't be able to run this weekend, but there's always the week after that, or after that, I just have to get back up, and try again.

SO PANCAKES!

Today's recipe turned out a little too sweet because I made a mistake and added honey at the end. But really they were delicious, sweet, but delicious. They went really well with a strip of bacon well done.

Ingredients
2 eggs
1/2 C water
1/3 C maple syrup
1 Tbsp vanilla
2 Tbsp coconut oil (melted)
1 1/4 C almond flour
1/4 C coconut flour
1 Tbsp arrowroot powder
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
coconut oil- for pan
Honey - optional (also unnecessary, I'll explain below)

Steps
In a bowl add all wet ingredients (eggs, water, maple syrup, vanilla, coconut oil), then on top of that add your dry ingredients (almond flour, coconut flour, arrowroot powder, sea salt, baking powder) and mix with fork until combined. Here I took a moment and forgot that my mixture already had maple syrup so I added about a Tbsp of honey, it did not ruin the pancakes, but they were sweet and edible without any additional sauce or fruit. So your call.

In a pan on medium high heat, melt coconut oil. Add batter for a silver dollar sized pancake. Here i the tricky part with this particular recipe. Mine bubbled a little, but not a lot (if you make regular pancakes you know that the trick to knowing when to flip is that the bubbles cover the up side) so you need to make a guess about whether it is time to flip. You can also play with temperature of your pan to try to get it to a better place. Mine kept burning so I ended up flipping them early. In the 'done' picture you can see folds in the top because when I scooped the pancake to flip it would fold because it wasn't done through to the other side enough, yet it was burning a bit. So again, adjust your heat, be willing to give some to your pupper dog to test eat. My dog seemed to like them all! I'd say that I think this recipe is deliocus but also that the flipping and guess made it a higher degree of difficulty. So next time I might try adding banana, or pumpkin to help bind the pancakes together better. But don't trust me- try for yourself. And as for me, I will continue on in my quest for the perfect pancake.

Contestant #3 Paleo Samoas, Caramel Delites

Presenting the long awaiting third and final contestant in my Paleo girl scout cookie off. The Samoa, or Caramel Delite, easily one of my favorite cookies, but clearly one of the most difficult to pull off. 

Reasons for degree of difficulty: 

Reason 1: there's a hole in the middle of this cookie- from the start, I decided to skip the hole, because more topping sounded awesome!

Reason 2: chocolate on the bottom, chocolate stripe on the top, and I have to make caramel, that's a lot of work. And don't get me wrong the cookie is work, but I think it paid off.

Reason 3: my own silly choices, I used unblanched trader joe's almond flour (it's cheap and I love it), it has bigger molecules and thus did not want to bind into a cookie cutter-able dough. Which is why mine are square. Regardless of presentation these cookies are still 'delite-full'. 

Cookies:

2 C. almond flour
1/2 C. unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 C. raw honey
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 egg
3 Tbsp coconut oil, melted

Caramel:

1/2 C. Nature Balance

1/4 C. Coconut Oil 

1 1/4 C. palm sugar

1/4 C. Coconut Nectar

6 oz MimicCream 

Chocolate:

1 C. dark chocolate chips

1 Tbsp coconut oil

Place all cookie ingredients in food processor and pulse until a dough forms. The next step is to place the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll to 1/4 inch thickness- however this did not happen for me. -For mine I used un-blanched almond flour from Trader Joe's, and the consistency of the dough made it so when I tried to use my 1inch cookie cutter they would not come up from the parchment paper. So I decided to just pull the top parchment paper piece off and cook it as one large bar cookie. Place in oven for 10-15 minutes (if you do get round cookies 10-12 should be enough time!)

Remove from oven and if in bar form, cut into squares and cool. While cooling, you can cook caramel.

In saucepan over med-high heat combine all Caramel ingredients and bring to a low boil. Insert candy thermometer and keep boiling (and stirring occasionally) until it reaches 248F. Be patient- this will take time to reach but it will happen. If you go too soon it will not 'gel' like caramel so keep it on the heat. The second you reach 248, get it off away from the heat- I walked mine outside in fact (it was a chilly day and it helped).  Allow to cool a little, then spoon onto your rounds or squares (or trapezoids, if you feel like cutting them like that). Sprinkle unsweetened coconut on top of caramel before it cools so it will 'stick'. 

Next melt chocolate and coconut oil, then dip the bottom of the cookies into the chocolate and place on a clean piece of parchment paper. I used a pair of tongs to dip the bottoms. Then create a 'drizzle' across the top in true 'girl scout' cookie fashion. I put my melted chocolate in a ziplock sandwich bag and cut a tiny hole in the corner to then drizzle the cookies- **NOTE** make sure you get the air out, and that you don't press too hard on the bag because it's just a little ziplock bag and under stress might make a mini chocolate explosion over some of your samoas, not that that happened to me. (it sure did).

So down to tasting the cookies. Even though these cookies were not being the correct shape and did not have holes in them, I still think they stand up. The texture of the coconut meets caramel on a shortbread bottom laced with chocolate is really crazy decadent. I can't really eat more than 1 at a time in good conscience, but Tag-A-Longs were my favorite cookie, but I love peanut butter (even though they are made with sunflower seed butter). I think everyone who participated in the taste test seemed to vote for the cookie they liked the most in 'normal' girl scout form which I think is proof enough that these recipes are a great alternative to the sugar packed box cookies. They are certainly delicious, and certainly worth the effort.

Now for some chocolate detox after all these sweet posts.