Best Liver and Onions, really!

Never in a million years would I have expected myself to be a liver lover. I find this journey into the GAPS/whole foods diet such a fascinating act of self discovery. When I think back, especially on my childhood, fitness and health were always a big part of my life, but my understanding of nutrition and what it means to be healthy has certainly changed a lot throughout the years. Growing up in the 80s, all I heard as a kid was to count calories and exercise, which I did in earnest only to have less than optimal results. Ok, so maybe there was a bit of rationalizing that dessert instead of a proper supper, or having a soda instead of something snacky like chips (it was diet soda after all), but I was a kid. I mean, I always thought the "healthy" foods like salads and fresh fruits and veggies LOOKED really good, they just never appealed to my very narrow palate.

Of course all that has been changing over the years, and continues to take some pretty radical turns as I have been exploring the GAPS diet, but there were and still are some things that make me a little hesitant, like introducing organ meats. I had not heard the best things about organ meats, especially liver. Most people don't seem to care for it so of course that tainted my own perspective as well, even though the hubby had no qualms and had actually been known to enjoyed it on occasion. I was determined to add this nutritional power food to my diet though, and so I bought my first package of liver online from US Wellness Meats. I heard on various podcasts how people like to "hide" the liver with other ground meat to make it more palatable, so naturally this is where I started. My first attempt at introducing liver into the diet resulted in some pretty delicious burgers, and I never tasted the liver. Baby steps.

Flash forward a couple of months later to an evening dining out with the family. The hubby orders some liver for dinner, and again, I was very hesitant to taste it, after all, I had a delicious prime rib sitting right in front of me. It was not till the next morning when I finally I discovered the savory, complex yet mellow flavor of liver. Something about the texture and the overall richness of the meat that really stuck with me. Of course it was once again mixed with additional meat, the leftover prime rib from the night before, but to my amazement it was actually quite yummy! I was finally enjoying liver!

The next step was to try making it on my own, on it's own, and after a few experiments, found a pretty awesome recipe! The only problem, never enough liver to go around...!

The recipe is pretty simple and, like any recipe, is very loose and easily modified. All I use is some coconut flour with a little salt and pepper to dredge the liver, with a heaping helping of coconut oil for cooking, though any GAPS/Paleo friendly oil will do. The best tip I can give for preparing liver though is to soak it with lemon juice. I think the shortest I've done is a couple hours, so it's not necessarily a quick evening meal depending on the forethought, but after the soaking the cooking goes pretty quick. And don't forget the caramelized onions, which is another awesome recipe (cooking tip?) that I will have to post about as well. Too much yummy food, too little time (and fridge space!).


The Recipe:

• 2 lbs good quality, grass-fed liver (I do like liver!)
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
• pepper to taste
• at least 1 tbs lemon juice (I get pretty liberal with the juice.)
• water - enough to cover the liver completely for soaking
• coconut oil for cooking (1-2tbs)
• 1 onion, or better yet, caramelized onions!

The Process:

• Rinse liver well and place in water and lemon juice in a large bowl to soak for at least two hours.
• While the liver is soaking, or right before it's finished, prep the coconut flour, salt and pepper in a bowl for dredging.
• After soaking, rinse liver well again and start slicing. I aim for about 1/2-1in strips, but to your own preference.
• Get your skillet going with coconut oil. *If cooking up the onions with the liver, add those in and let them get soft and translucent BEFORE adding the liver. If using pre-made/prepped caramelized onions, those can be added at any time. While the pan is heating, start dredging by placing the strips of liver in the dredge, making sure to evenly coat each piece.
• Once all the pieces are coated start dropping them into the hot skillet. I generally cook around medium heat, and just keep an eye on the pieces so they don't over cook. Since these are generally being made for the week's leftovers, I will generally error on the side of pinker, more under cooked than over.

And that's about it! Pro tip: make sure not to over cook the liver as it tends to get a bit more rubbery the longer it cooks! Play around with other seasonings too, some paprika or a small bit of cayenne could add a nice little pop of flavor to the dish. And definitely experiment with caramelized onions, which turn out pretty awesome when done in the slowcooker...!

The Clean Fifteen and the Dirty Dozen.

Prior to starting our GAPS journey, the hubby and I were on a mission to clean up the diet with more organic foods, which have become the main-stay ever since. Going entirely, or in our case mostly (depending on the week), organic is not a cheap endeavor though (thank you government for the over-priced organic labeling....), and so being aware of the produce that has the least amount of contamination is important. To help us keep on the up and up with our shopping, I created these two posters illustrating the Clean Fifteen and the Dirty Dozen (based on the Environmental Working Group list for 2013). I'm a big saver when it comes to my pennies, so I'm hoping that by having these posters prominently displayed in the kitchen will help us remember what to buy, whether we're at the grocery store or the local farmer's market.

Another aid in our quest for high-quality, fresh food has been the purchase of an additional freezer, which has been on the wish-list for far too long. Whether it's produce or meat, helping to squeak out some longevity from the food we eat is important. Hopefully, this will help us save some additional dollars down the road, along with me exercising some restraint when it comes to the grocery shopping in general....(I have a tendency to over buy and stock-pile food....).

Some of the other ways we've been saving lately, is buying seasonally. What a unique concept I know, but it really does make a difference with the grocery bill. With everything being so on-demand at the grocery stores, I never had much appreciation for the types of foods available during the different times of year. Shopping regularly at the farmer's market has definitely changed that for me, and has opened me up to so much more yummy food like rutabagas, which I have experimented with a bit and got some pretty awesome results. It really is worth the effort to get to the market if you can, especially if you can find a good organic vendor as we have in the JenEhr Family Farm.

Next on our to-do list is to purchase more bulk meat, like a half or whole cow. I'm so curious and excited to not only play with some more recipes for all the different parts, but also to see just how long that amount of meat would last us. We've been purchasing our meat from Ney's Big Sky, who generally attend most of the local farmer's markets throughout the summer, and have a delivery system for the off-season. Everything we've had from then has been pretty outstanding, so purchasing the meat in bulk is a no-brainer, just gotta suck it up and do it. The difficulty is that there is definitely a large upfront investment, but I'm hopeful that it will be well worth it! I mean, how could having even more delicious food not be worth that little extra effort?!

Eggs in Purgatory.

Fresh fixins were running a little slim this past weekend, and so I went after the numerous cans of tomatoes we have in the pantry. Prior to the GAPS diet, we were big chili eaters. Besides being delicious, it's super easy to make, especially in the slow cooker. Our technique was to basically add a bunch of canned (maybe frozen) veggies to the pot and let it go. After the diet switch, we went through a large purge of the kitchen cabinets when we got rid of just about all of our canned food, except for the canned tomatoes, which we had a lot of. In the end, it was probably not the cleanest, and definitely not the freshest meal we've had in a while, but dang did it turn out awesome!

Due to the anticipated chili making, most of our tomato cans contain various peppers and onions, garlic, and other seasonings. With that, the Purgatory recipe didn't require too much more seasoning, but I did take a couple recipe ideas and added just a few additional herbs and spices. The result was pretty amazing. It's super easy to make (especially with the assistance of canned goodies), and would go well with some kind of veggie hash as a side (we had some leftover roasted rutabaga and winter squash fries). If dairy is well tolerated, I'm sure this would be even more delicious with a cheesy topping. Mmmm....breakfast!

Those poor eggs cooking way in the fire and brimstone of purgatory...I mean delicious, delicious tomatoes!

Voila! Delicious, and relatively quick breakfast with example of the rutabaga prepped as fries, which are amazing as well!

The Recipe:

• 4 eggs
• 1 can stewed tomatoes
• 1 can diced tomatoes and peppers (I used fire-roasted with peppers and onions)
• 1 can tomato paste
• 1 onion, chopped (I used one large yellow onion)
• Garlic powder to taste
• Coconut oil (for cooking onion)

The Process:

• In a cast-iron skillet (or regular skillet), melt coconut oil and add chopped onion. Cook until onion is soft and translucent.
• Add all the canned tomato stuffs and seasonings to the skillet and heat through.
• Once all the ingredients in the skillet are warm/hot add in the eggs. Let them cook until the bottom of the eggs are done, then (carefully) flip and turn off heat.
• Serve and enjoy some awesome brunch!

This, as with just about any recipe I post, is very fast and loose. Try playing around with the different tomato and seasoning options and see what turns out. It's tough to go astray with tomato anything!

Hasselback Rutabagas.

Is it just me that thinks of David Hasselhoff when I hear the term hasselback?

Anyway, I have been thoroughly enjoying the new diet the hubby and I started back in the early part of 2013. All the home cooked, fresh food has been amazing! We're not only learning so much about cooking and food, but about ourselves as well. One of the things I've been learning, is that I absolutely LOVE eating seasonally! With so much food on-demand at the grocery store, I've never really had an appreciation for how crops and produce changes throughout the year. There just isn't the same consideration when you can get everything and anything all year round. Now that we've been hitting up the farmer's markets (so grateful to have a winter market despite the temperatures in this area!) I have been having fun experimenting with the new produce and trying out new recipes. Today's challenge: how to prep and cook rutabaga.

I don't recall ever really eating, let alone cooking rutabaga. It's one of those odd looking root vegetables that I'm sure would have horrified me back in the day. Things have changed quite a bit since then, and today I am super excited about working with the new root. Fortunately, we live in an age of Pinterest and Google, so even if I've never seen the stuff, within seconds I have info on what it is, how to prep AND cook it, with potential for some pretty amazing results.

So for today I chose to do hasselback style rutabaga for the hubby and I, based on the recipe I found at the Florida Costal Cooking site. It turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. The cook time was a little longer than I anticipated, mostly because in my attempts at healthy cooking, I tend to do more low and slow in hopes of avoiding any chemical breakdown of the oils (and the rutabagas I used were pretty huge). Perhaps that is why these actually turned out quite tender, and the robust, earthy flavor of the rutabage combined with the spiciness of the garlic and onion, all made for an amazing addition to our evening meal. It was a little difficult to get the slits cut as it's a pretty tough root, but I think it was worth the effort. Next time however, I think I'll make things slightly easier on myself and go for rutabaga fries (making things even easier with the employ of a mandolin...)! In the mean time, enjoy and let me know if there are any other good tips or tricks when working with rutabaga!

This is by far the least fun part, trying to cut into that rutabaga!

Minced garlic is definitely the way to go, though I bet a roasted garlic smeared into each slit would be even better....hmmm...next time!

Wrap it up good, though not too tight so you can check on it after 30 minutes.

And this did not last long! Got devoured pretty quickly, you've been warned!

*The Recipe:

• 2 rutabagas
• 2 cloves garlic sliced (I made things easier on myself by using minced garlic, and lots of it!)
• 2 slices red onion (or more depending on the size of the slits and rutabaga itself)
• 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil (or your oil of choice, for something really yummy maybe try bacon grease!)
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp salt (or to your taste)
• Two pieces aluminum foil for baking.

The Process:

• Preheat the oven to 425, though depending on the oil/fat being used, lowering the temperature will help keep all those yummy nutrients in tact, or so I hear. I generally cook at 350 just to be safe.
• Cut the root part of the rutabaga off so it can stand on it's own, then proceed to approximately 1/4 inch slits from the top down, being careful not to go completely through the rutabaga itself. 
• Now the fun part: start stuffing those slits with onion and garlic. If using slice garlic, alternate as you go, if using minced, I stuffed onion into each slice then added minced garlic to the top.
• Once the rutabagas are prepped, place them on the aluminum foil and pour your oil of choice over the top, making sure it seeps into each one of those crevices.
• Next wrap up the rutabagas and place in the oven for approximately 30 minutes, or until tender. Then remove the foil and cook for an additional 10-15 minutes, or until the outside is a nice golden brown.
• Finally: enjoy the heck out of them!

*This is a very flexible recipe, so have fun with it! My rutabagas were pretty huge compared to what I was seeing on the FCC site, so modifications were made both with ingredients and cook time. Feel free to experiment with different flavors and seasonings to suit your palate! 

Cocao butter from cacao nibs? Experiment!

For better or worse, the hubby and I go trough a lot of nut butter. What can I say, it's yummy! We've been playing with different types of nuts like pecans, walnuts, cashews, along with some various flavorings; all of which got me thinking: if we can make nut butter from grinding down the raw nuts, could we make a cacao butter or spread by grinding the cacao nibs...? My curiosity was piqued, and after weeks of this idea bouncing around in my head (and needing to buy more cacao nibs), this past weekend I finally got around to experimenting!

The results were not quite what I expected. At first glance it was working pretty well, and the smells emitting from the food processor were simply divine! The cacao nibs ground down to a fine powder, which had the most rich, chocolatey smell, and eventually turned into a very thick paste. This was exciting to me, had I really made a chocolatey spread out of the nibs? The answer: sort of. The hubby and I took a quick break for lunch and left the chocolate paste in the food processor to deal with after. What we found was a very crusty mess. The paste had hardened, and required some heavy chiseling to get the food processor blade free. A minor set back as I was once again able to grind the dried up cacao and get the paste back. With that, I decided to take the paste and flatten it out into a bar form, making our very own 100% cacao bars! That in itself, was pretty amazing, and well worth the effort!

For my taste, the broken down nibs have a slightly more mellow taste than the raw nibs, but both are equally delicious. But since they were able to grind into some sort of pasty butter like consistency, the hubby and I started thinking, what if we added some oil to it, maybe some coconut oil? Or perhaps a 50/50 mix with other nuts like cashews to make a more spreadable chocolate confection. So many possibilities! I will definitely continue the experimentation, and post the (hopefully very delicious) results!

Cacao nibs. YUM!

Well, while it's not quite like eating a handful of chocolate chips, my verdict is that cacao nibs are quite the tasty, and versatile treat!

Recently I had watched a couple food documentaries (nerd, I know), and there were two food items in particular that caught my attention based on their (claimed) health benefits: cacao and chia seeds. As super foods, both cacao and chia seeds pack quite a nutritional punch, and are especially good for digestion. Chia seeds, when mixed with liquid, become very gelatinous and, from what I hear, can help pull out the toxins in the body and digestive track, aiding the body's ability to detox. Cacao nibs, among other things, are high in antioxidants and fiber, as well as essential minerals and fat. With my on-going journey towards perfect gut health, I had to at least give these a try, especially since starting the GAPS diet I've been without chocolate. Fortunately I haven't been missing it, but this gave me the perfect excuse to be a little indulgent.

The hubby had a really good description for these: cacao nibs are to chocolate as raw espresso beans are to coffee. They definitely smell like chocolate as espresso beans smell of coffee, but the taste is far more bitter, much more like coffee. Not that I find this to be a bad thing necessarily, since much like coffee, the bitter-sweet flavor can be a little addicting. Combine the chocolatey, coffee flavor with an incredibly satisfying crunch, and cacao nibs prove to be quite the tasty treat.

Despite the more bitter, coffee-like flavor,  I actually find cacao nibs to be rather enjoyable on their own. I do admit though, that they work especially well when sprinkled over yogurt with a large piece of juice pulp bread! My next step is to start adding them to more recipes. In addition to the bread, I think they would make a fantastic addition to these almond butter, coconut treats (modified recipe to come) as I think they will not only broaden the flavors, but add some much needed crunch!

All in all, I would highly recommend giving cacao nibs a try.

At long last: Pulp Chips!

Sometimes, there's just nothing like a good crispy chip! As a life-long carb addict, after switching to the GAPS diet, I found myself sorely missing that crispy texture I'd grown to love by way of crackers, cereal (LOTS of cereal), toast, etc. I needed something to satisfy that crunch without over doing it on the good stuff like almonds and other nuts and seeds.

Fortunately, with GAPS, especially the intro, we started doing more juicing, which left us with an abundance of a food product that we didn't quite know what to do with, but also didn't want going to waste. I just couldn't justify disposing all that pulp, so I started perusing the interwebs for ideas on how to use it. There were some interesting recipes, many of which I still need to try, but one in particular stood out as it seemed to be rather GAPS friendly: the Detoxinista's Italian Meat(less) balls. With a couple modifications for GAPS, these veggie balls worked quite well. The hubby and I used them on our 50(+) mile bike-ride as a take-along snack. Without a good sauce though, for us at least, the veggie balls seemed to be a little dry and flat tasting. We both really liked the concept though, which got me thinking: what if we just flattened these out and make them into chips?

I'd seen enough recipes online for juice pulp chips, and since we already had a pretty tasty recipe that just seemed to be missing that little extra something, we went for it! I adjusted some of the quantities to make it work better on the flat baking sheet, and after some trial and error with bake-time, ended up with a dang tasty chip recipe! This has become another one of our go-tos. Since we're juicing on a daily basis, we rarely have a shortage of pulp, so the chips are on a pretty heavy rotation throughout the week. Besides the fact that they are a great snack, the pulp seems less likely to go bad when it's all crisped up. One day I will give this a try in a food dehydrator for a more "raw" version and do more of a side-by-side comparison. Now I just need to get the dehydrator!

As for serving, they are of course great on their own, but they go particularly well with guacamole (especially our go-to, extra garlicky, extra oniony guac), cheese, dip, nut butter, just about anything! And the pulp does not need to be strictly vegetable base, as ours consistently has some type of fruit in it, and still works well with the more savory seasoning. With that, I'm hoping to try making a more pumpkin spice-like recipe soon, so stay tuned for those results!

Pro tip: start with the egg. I use an immersion blender with a whisk attachment.

Once the eggs are scrambled, everything else gets added, in no particular order.

Flatten everything out on the pan. I find parchment paper is almost critical for non-stick results.

After a good night in the oven, break apart and enjoy!

The Recipe (makes two baking sheets):

• 5 Cups Juice Pulp (very rough measurement)
• 3 eggs
• 2 tsp Onion powder
• 2 tsp Garlic powder
• 2 tsp Oregano (dried)
• 2 tsp Basil (dried)
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 Tbs Parmesan Cheese
• 1 oz Olive Oil

The Process:

• In a large bowl, mix eggs until well blended.
• Add pulp, seasoning (onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, basil, salt), cheese and olive oil. 
• Mix ingredients by hand start dividing between the two prepared baking sheet (I use parchment paper and it works fabulously!).
• Flatten the mixture out so that it fills the full baking sheet.
• Place in the over on a low temperature setting (for my oven, 200 degrees is ideal) and let sit for at least 8 hours (overnight or during the day while at work). 

As the pulp mixture dries it will detach from the parchment paper making it easy to break into bite-size pieces.