Massive Pot Roast

Here we go.  This is another in the pot roast series.  While the slow cooker is very handy, pot roast takes half the time and is just as tasty.

This week started with 2 strips of bacon and 1/2 of a red onion in the bottom of the pot.  Additional ingredients:

Golden Beet
Japanese Sweet potato
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Kale
Coconut milk
Tomato sauce
1 3/4 lb grass feed beef shoulder roast
black pepper
turmeric (do you say tuR mer ic   or Tu mer ic ???  I prefer the former, but maybe I'm wrong)
cayenne


Photo sequence:

Part 1:  Imagine the bacon and onions

The rest:

Veggie Layer

Add 1 cup coconut milk and a nice chunk of grass fed beef

Coated with Turmeric and Cayenne

Ready for the oven - 325 for about 3 hours

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

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.

This Week's Gruel - More Beef and Liver - with Dog Treats

This week's gruel is pretty much like last week's:

48 oz tomato sauce
1 shallot
10 baby carrots
6 large brussel sprouts
broccoli
kale
1.3 lb grass fed beef roast
1/4 lb grass fed beef liver

However, the twist was baking some liver treats for Rufus.  I cut 1/4 lb of liver into strips and baked in an oiled pizza pan at 300 for about 15 minutes.  Yum! says Rufus.

Here's the pics:

Ready in 6-8 hours...

Almost forgot the Kale!

This was 1/2 lb and I don't "love" liver yet, so I split it with Rufus

1/4" thick strips - baked at 300 for about 15 minutes.

Finished product - keep in the fridge for a week's worth of treats.

Are these to your liking, sir?

Be careful when feeding - I almost lost a finger.

Lunch and Dinner - Beef, Liver, Salmon, and Bacon

I missed a few days, so here is some catching up with some finished products.

1.  Slow cooker stew with

Grass fed ground beef - 1 lb
Grass fed beef liver - 1/4lb
tomato sauce
red onion
veggies...  can't quite remember all that went in there.

Made 4 bowls, so that's 1 oz of liver a day.  Healthy stuff.

2.  Baked King Salmon and veggies slow simmered in ghee.  More carb friendly on this one with the sweet potatoes.

3.  Bacon! and veggies - Golden beet, cauliflower, and asparagus.  Ran out of food, so I had to improvise.  Big stocking trip to get some more meat from Riverview Farms tomorrow at the Flat Shoals stop.

This Week's Gruel - Beef Stew w/ Coconut Milk

Nothing really special about this week's gruel, just another week of eating Paleo lunches rather than fast food or whatever the cafeteria serves up.

• Beef Top Round 
• Shallot
• Carrots (A few extra because my little buddy Lucy won't be eating her share anymore)
• Golden Beet
• Brussel sprouts
• Chopped tomato
• Broccoli Rabe
• Fire roasted diced tomato
• Coconut milk
• Spices:  Turmeric, Cayenne, Black Pepper

Turmeric (curcumin) is some really good stuff... It may fight infections and cancer and Alzheimer's and other inflammatory diseases.

The base layer...

More good veggies

Coconut milk - it's good for you!

Add the tomato sauce and coconut milk

Add the meat and spices - I was using up a bottle of Turmeric...

Add the 1/2 of frozen Broccoli Rabe... turn on the crock pot and wait 6 - 8 hours

This Week's Gruel - Beef Shoulder Roast Stew

Here is this week's slow cooker recipe.  This one has a bone-in grass fed beef shoulder roast along with

shallot
golden beet
brussel sprouts
broccoli
tomato sauce
black pepper

Here's the photo evidence:

the veggie layer

Grass fed beef shoulder roast

Some bone broth action in this one...

~ 60 oz of organic tomato sauce & 1 tbsp of black pepper

Did someone mention marrow bones?

A Few Dinners - Beef & Mahi Mahi

Here are a couple of recent dinners.  The main "new" thing is a slightly smaller portion of grass feed beef.  Instead of my "normal" 1/2 lb pre-cooked weight, I'm cutting back to 1/3 lb.  In part, this is due to reading Paul Jaminet's Perfect Health Diet.  One thing I learned from that is my protein intake was >100 grams on a typical day (in fact close to 140g).  That's essentially more than any human can process, and there are some potential negative consequences of eating that much protein.

There's a potential problem with too much protein. Your body doesn't store excess protein. It either converts it to glucose, if necessary (with 55% efficiency, usually when you're eating very low-carb), or your body excretes the excess. In theory, the excretion requires too much work from the kidneys, and the excretion turns the excess into ammonia, which could leech calcium from your bones as a protective measure. Dr. Christopher Gardner speculates about this in a YouTube video while discussing the results of the A to Z study. link

So, if we're cutting back the protein by 40g or about 160 calories, what are we going to do to replace the calories?  Answers:

   1) add more Ghee to the stir fry
   2) top the burger with 1 tbsp of grass fed butter
   3) make sure to add a strip of bacon to the veggies.

Yum!

The second dish was baked Mahi Mahi, and basically the same veggie mix.  I did not put butter on the fish, but maybe I will next time.

Baked Mahi Mahi with veggies... I love Cayenne pepper

Rufus - the other kitchen helper

This Week's Gruel - Beef & Beef Liver Stew

Bone Broth in the Mix

Here's a typical week's "gruel" - a slow cooker recipe.  I call it gruel based on a concept from Paul Pitchford's book called Healing with Whole Foods.  It's a great book because it integrates Chinese Medicine with Western medicine.  It does allow grains, but there's still a lot of great content in that book.  The chapter on Oils alone is worth the purchase price.

Also, in that book he describes how we are confronted with over 50,000 types of food, and the idea is that drains our mental energy.  Gruel is simple.  Mostly the ingredients are just the foods themselves with a little black pepper.  People ask "what does it taste like?"   Well, like food tastes... but not like Doritos or other chemically engineered foods.  (See the 60 Minutes episode - Tweaking Tastes and Creating Cravings on that topic).

Ingredients

Meat:  Grass Fed Beef and Liver, Beef Broth

Vegetables:  Squash, Onion, Broccoli, Green Onion, Cauliflower, Tomato Sauce, and Kale/Collards/Mustard Greens

Spices:  Black Pepper, Turmeric, and Crushed Chili Peppers

This makes 4 bowls, which I bring for lunch during the week.

Pictures

I made this a few weeks ago. This was in the freezer. Saved the fat for other purposes.

Grass Fed Chuck Roast 

I smell BEEF!!!

Spices - not a lot

There's the Liver

There's 1/2 lb of frozen mixed greens