The Perfect Steak

All these years I have been grilling steak and not getting very good results.  Grass fed beef often ends up tough rather than tender.  Luckily, I just bought Tim Ferriss's book - The Four Hour Chef.  Highly recommended!

Here are the basics to making a perfect steak:

• Warm it up - at least room temperature, or preheat in the oven (you'll soon see)
• Sear it on both sides on the grill (2 - 3 minutes)
• Put it back in the oven at about 250F and then cook slowly for about 20 - 25 minutes.  Check it with a meat thermometer.

And... there you have it, the perfect steak.  If you've been making it any other way, I suggest trying this method and seeing how it works.  Tasty!

Step by step

Warm at 200 degrees for about 10 minutes on a baking rack in the oven

Grass fed strip steak... you can see it is just a little cooked

After the grill - back to the oven at 250.  Check the temp after 15 minutes.

Seared, still cool in the middle

Interior temp of about 125F

Perfect medium rare - with a huge pile of veggies

Eggs, Eggs, Eggs

Here are a few fried eggs options.  Mostly, I eat them for brunch on the weekends and try to eat 3 at a time.  Good protein, saturated fat, choline, and vitamin K2.  Choline is a vital nutrient... just not one that you hear about as often as vitamins and minerals.  From the Wikipedia page:

In general, people who do not eat many whole eggs may have to pay close attention to get enough choline in their diets.^[15]Studies on a number of different populations have found that the average intake of choline was below the adequate intake.^[2][16]

Vitamin K2 is crucial for immune system function and working with Vitamin D.  If you supplement Vitamin D, you need to make sure you're getting enough K2 to avoid arterial calcification.

The crucial piece of kitchen equipment is the small Lodge Cast Iron pan.  Well seasoned with Bacon grease.

Eggs - they're great for dinner, too.

Reheat some grilled bratwurst

Add eggs

On the plate - reminded me of living in San Antonio - sausage and egg tacos...
but these days, I'm grain free

Scrambled - with Mustard Greens

On the plate - with bacon and Vermont Cheddar (from raw milk)

Moroccan Lamb Sausage & Carbs

Here's some Moroccan Lamb sausage from the DeKalb Farmer's Market.  Quite good, although the Greek version I had last week might be a little better.

Since I'm officially adding back the carbs, here's today's recipe:

3 links lamb sausage
Cauliflower
Red Kale
Red potato (one, medium)
1 cup Koku rice
~2 tbsp ghee (to fry the veggies)
~1 tbsp butter - on the rice

Here are the Nutritiondata.com stats:

http://nutritiondata.self.com/services/referral?messageKey=0d046b5ddc76307c7a68c3306b7d8c2a

Basic stats:

1250 calories

28% carb

48% fats

24% protein   (probably less... had to improvise because the database didn't have lamb sausage)

Buffalo Meatball Snack

Well, here's more of the return of the Safe Carbs.  White Rice!!!  Yikes.  I haven't eaten rice, except maybe some wild rice in a weekly gruel, for over a year.  This is sushi rice, which I really like.  I slathered it in grass fed butter and reheated the Buffalo Meatballs in the oven.

Keeping up with me requires eating lots of food!

Grilled Pork Chop

This was a very very tasty pork chop from Frolona Farms.  They were out of grass fed beef the last time I stopped by the farmer's market in East Atlanta Village.  So,... this turned out to be a great alternative.

Lamb Steak, Veggies, Curry

Here's another leftover recipe.  I grilled 2 lamb steaks and needed to reheat this one.  Same basic formula of meat, veggies, and ghee.  Added a bunch of curry and cayenne pepper to spice this one up.

Leftover Turkey

This is another quick one.  Perhaps you're overloaded with turkey after Thanksgiving?

Turkey

Japanese Sweet Potato

shallot

broccoli

yellow squash

asparagus

1 strip of bacon

cooked in ghee

Eggs, Bacon, and Avocados

Here's a quick one.  3 eggs, bacon, 1/2 avocado & some grass fed New Zealand Cheddar

Buffalo Meatballs

My name is Riley and I have boundless energy!!!

Well, there was a little hiatus from posting as I adjusted to having a new kitchen helper, Riley.  She's about 10 months old now and quite full of energy.  I've been hiking so much that I've lost about 3 lbs.

I also needed to come up with something a little different in terms of a recipe.  So, here are some grilled buffalo meatballs with a veggie mix of Japanese sweet potato, yellow squash, spinach, and shallot cooked in ghee.  I'm upping the carbs in my diet after getting a question answered on an episode of Robb Wolf's Paleo Solution podcast.  Essentially, I was in sort of a limbo land between a ketogenic diet and one with not quite enough carbs.  Listen to the podcast for more details.

Here's the photo sequence.

Garlic and olives

1 lb of ground buffalo from Costco

Mix it together

Add some black pepper and cayenne

Form into meatballs

These are very low fat, so I coated them in Avocado Oil to prevent sticking on the grill

Onto the gas grill with Man Grates

Almost done

Here's a sweet potato that I pre-baked.  This makes it quicker to cook since you just need to heat it up.

Finished product

This Week's Gruel - Pork Shoulder Stew

This weeks gruel is a bone-in pork shoulder roast from Frolona Farm.  I've buying both ground beef and pork from them for a few weeks at the East Atlanta Village Farmer's Market on Thursday afternoons.  Very tasty.

Ingredients:
2 lb bone in pork shoulder roast
tomato sauce
cauliflower
cippolini onion
purple potato
yellow squash
carrot
mustard greens

Okay, so here we go on the photo sequence:

Turmeric, black pepper, and cayenne for spices

Patient kitchen helper:  Got any plans for that bone?

This Week's Gruel - Return of the Bone Broth

This is pretty much a standard week's slow cooker recipe:

Grass fed beef shoulder roast and liver, yellow squash, onion, broccoli, cauliflower...  and red potatoes
Turmeric and black pepper
Organic tomato sauce
1/2 can of Trader Joe's light coconut milk
3/4 cup of bone broth

Here's the NutritionData.com profile... but of course, there's no "bone broth" in the database.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2652284/2

I finally got organized enough to make some Bone Broth the day before, so I added about 3/4 cup to this week's gruel (Bone Broth recipe from NomNomPaleo).

Okay, here's the step by step part.  15 minutes start to finish...

Red potatoes! A dose of the "safe carbs"... 

Chop it up and throw it in the cooker

Spices

Beef shoulder roast and beef liver

And, with liver in the mix, that means Rufus got some more tasty liver strips.  These were cooked in leftover  bacon grease.  Double yum!

1/4" strips - bake at 300 for about 15 minutes - 300 keeps the bacon grease from smoking 

Finished product - really no reason I couldn't snack on these, too.

Return of the Carbs! Or at least 1 red potato

Well, after some feedback and further analysis of my diet, it looks like I need some additional carbs.  I'm not going crazy.  We're talking one medium size red potato in this recipe.

Here's a link to the Q&A with Paul Jaminet that led to this shocking change.

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/q-a/comment-page-33/#comment-89640

Here's dinner:
Grass fed beef coated in turmeric, red potato, cauliflower, onion, brussel sprouts, collard greens, and bacon!

Rufus was the beneficiary of some beef, beef fat, and connective tissue from a bone broth I made today.

A few quick Paleo dinners

here they are... recent dinners.

This one is Pork Tenderloin.   And yes, I have read Paul Jaminet's series on pork, but still eat it.  Yum!

http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/pork-did-leviticus-117-have-it-right/

I'm going with correlation is not causation and other critiques of this that talk about the quality of the source of the pork.  Also, much of what I eat is organic from local farms.

Next up, we have more grilled lamb chops with sweet potato, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and shallots.

and finally, grilled bratwurst with veggies from Riverview Farms.

Lamb Korma (sorta)

Here's this week's gruel - a spicy Indian lamb stew.

I adapted this recipe to ingredients I had on hand.

http://chriskresser.com/recipe-lamb-korma

1 lb lamb stew meat
2 tbsp ground ginger
1 tbsp masala
1 tbsp turmeric
4 cloves garlic
1 small cippolini onion
1/2 lb frozen blue kale
1 cup chopped broccoli
2 cans coconut milk
10 oz tomato sauce
3/4 cup ground cashews

It smells really good so far

Ground cashews and spices

Add the coconut milk (and tomato sauce)

Add the kale and lamb

Stir it up...  Slow Cooker on high for about 3 hours, then turn it down to low for another 3 - 5 hours

Midweek Leftovers - King Salmon and Veggies

This one is pretty simple:

Sweet potato

Brussel Sprouts

Cauliflower

Coconut oil (5 tbsp)

Leftover baked King Salmon

I heated up the veggies, and then added the salmon at the end to warm it up.

As a bonus for Rufus, with his modified Evo or Evolutionary diet, he had:

Evo dry

Evo canned

1 egg yolk

1 probiotic pill (white - hidden in the wet food)

When are you handing me my bowl? Says Rufus!