Thursday, November 29, 2012

Orange Juice Glad I Said Shrimp

On Monday, I asked my trainer, Anthony, to give me one of those “hardest workout of my life kind of workouts”. To which he responded with exactly that. Then Tuesday night I went to Crazy 8’s class. Now for those of you who imagine pansy group classes, I’d like you to erase that from your mind. Then imagine the hardest workout of your life, double it and that’s Crazy 8’s. In fact, when I first started taking this class, I would come home and have to lie down in the shower for half an hour or so just to get enough energy to stand back up. That’s not an exaggeration! So after two crazy workouts, I believe my metabolism was in overdrive because I was STAAAAAHVIN Tuesday night after class. But when you do that much work, you really want to eat something healthy but filling because your body is going to burn right through it! So on my menu was citrus shrimp stir fry. Not exactly sure what inspired the citrus part, but I do love grapefruit and there are very few proteins delicate enough to suck up the grapefruit flavor. Now, you guys know I’m not making rice at my house, so this really needed to have big veggies that would fill me up! Additionally, I could barely move my arms and legs, so it needed to be easy! The result was exactly what I needed!
Here’s the breakdown:

20-25 large raw shrimp

Shrimp Marinade
Zest of:
      1 orange
      1 lemon
      1 lime
Juice of:
      1 grapefruit
      1 orange
1 Tbsp honey
½ tsp red pepper flakes
S&P

Veggie Mix
12 oz bag of fresh broccoli florets
12 oz bag of fresh stir fry mix (snow peas, grated carrot, grated red cabbage)
½ large sweet onion, sliced

Stir Fry Sauce
3 Tbsp coconut aminos
1 Tbsp honey
½ tsp hot sesame oil

Other
½” chunk fresh ginger, minced
Blood orange olive oil

Mix the ingredients of the shrimp marinade. Pull the tails off the shrimp and put all of it in a Ziploc bag. Let it sit for about 40 minutes. Not much longer or it’ll turn into ceviche. Then put blood orange olive oil in a wok or large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the minced ginger and sauté for a few minutes until infused. Then drain shrimp from the marinade in a colander and add it to the wok. Cook about 4 minutes or until they turn pink. Remove shrimp from the pan and cover with aluminum foil. Then add just a bit more oil into the wok, add the veggies and sauté until just barely tender. You DO NOT want soft soggy veggies. While it’s cooking mix up the stir fry sauce and pour over the veggies. Plate the veggies and then the shrimp. Don’t mix the shrimp in the pan with the veggies. The flavor of the citrus won’t overcome the sauce.

I ate mine with a little bit of Sriracha on the side for the veggies. Not the shrimp, again, the citrus won’t overcome the Sriracha. This was super yummy and with all the dense broccoli and cabbage, it filled me right up despite the rumbly in my tumbly.

Now let me side bar and quickly tell you about coconut aminos. This is something I’ve recently discovered as an alternative to soy sauce. You can’t taste the difference, but there are 339mg sodium in 1 Tbsp of coconut aminos versus the 920mg in 1 Tbsp of soy sauce! Plus if you’re Paleo, this makes takes care of the soy! Always looking for superior products, so that’s my schpiel.







Alright friends, enjoy!


Thursday, November 15, 2012

I'm Cooking....No I'm Cooked!

Since Monday, I have cleaned out my closets which produced two garbage bags of clothes to donate, grocery shopped, attended boot camp, worked 12 hours, trained, stayed up for a ridiculously late UK game, subsequently attended 6:30 a.m. boot camp and worked another 12 hour day. I AM COOKED! But for the salted dark chocolate caramel I just treated myself to, I’d be face down. So folks, there is no witty or interesting story about the dish I’m blogging today. In fact, I cooked this meal a week ago. Thank goodness I have a couple back log recipes to share. But it was really good and I did invent it. So there you have it.
Here’s the breakdown:
2 mahi-mahi filets
2-3 tsp Chinese hot mustard
A splash of fish sauce
A splash of rice wine vinegar
½ tsp crush red pepper flakes
1-2 Tbsp olive oil

The truth is I did not measure anything except the fish, which is pretty easy. One Fish Two Fish. But it’s a marinade, so it’s all good! Mix all the ingredients together and put it and the fish in a Ziploc bag. Let it marinate for a couple hours. Then throw it on a screaming hot grill for about 5 minutes per side. Couldn’t be easier.
I paired the fish with a bok choy sauté that was also delish.
4 heads of baby bok choy, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
½” fresh ginger, minced
¾ of a fresh cayenne pepper sliced thinly
1 Tbsp Coconut oil
Sesame seeds

Melt coconut oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic, ginger and cayenne peppers. Sauté for 2-3 minutes until aromatic, but not so long that you brown the garlic. Toss in the bok choy and crank the heat up to high. Sauté until the bok choy is wilted about 5 minutes. Add the bok choy to your plate and place the fish on top. Then sprinkle lightly with sesame seeds. I had it with a little extra of the mustard on my plate to dip the fish in, but I like spicy more than the average bear, so you might want to skip that!


Besides the marinating time for the fish, this dish is very quick. It’s also really light but satisfying. It’s a perfect choice if you’ve had a big lunch or even if you just don’t want a heavy meal. Thank you for the bye today and I promise to have more energy next week. I think ;)
Salud!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

What Season Is It Again????

Last weekend it was autumn! I swear! Not that you could tell from the current weather! But since my southern butt prefers fall to winter ANY DAY, I’m still going to blog autumn inspired food. Ray was over for dinner on Saturday night and I had been to the farmers’ market that morning buying an unnatural amount of meat from Stillman at the Turkey Farm. However, that’s not all I purchased. I also found a bag of delicate lettuces that looked so good, I just couldn’t stop myself despite the pile of veggies already residing in my house. On the walk back up the hill to my house I decided since I had so many greens, I would make a giant autumn inspired salad with grilled chicken for my health conscious friend Ray! Who incidentally, lost about 15 pounds this summer. That’s right, go Ray! So before I ran into town to scoop him, I stopped at Whole Foods to pick up some of the other components for the salad. What I ended up with was really something!
Here’s the breakdown:
Varied Lettuces
*mine were all in one bag, but if you can’t find that, mix your own
2 handfuls arugula
2 red beets
*boiled until fork tender, peeled and sliced
2 chioggia beets
*raw and sliced
Goat cheese
1 handful dates, chopped
1 cup dried cherries
1 cup pecans, chopped
Fig balsamic vinegar
Olive oil
Fresh pepper

Mix the greens and arugula in a large bowl. Sprinkle dates, pecans and cherries on top, but focus most of them in the middle of the bowl. Line the bowl with red beets, Chioggia beets and crumbled goat cheese taking up 1/3 of the rim with each ingredient. Grind fresh pepper over top. For the dressing, I totally eyeballed it. Simple: fig balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Make as much as you want, but just know you need about 33% more oil than vinegar. But always taste it to make sure you like it before dumping it on your salad.

Now, if this salad is nothing else, it is BEAUTIFUL! I found it to be quite tasty, but even if you don’t, others might and it’s definitely something you’ll admire sitting out on the table until you toss it all together. It's almost too pretty to eat.....almost!




The chicken was marinated in a mix of spices and pomegranate juice, yes pomegranates are in season. But the real star was the salad. Ray also made an amazing pear dessert that I’ll blog as soon as he sends me the recipe…..cough cough RAY GET ON IT!!!

Cheers to fall...I mean winter...I don't knw what I mean. It'll probably be 80 degrees tomorrow!!!

Friday, November 2, 2012

Falling for Fall

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, I am in quite a festive mood! And for us southerners, festivity and holiday means food! Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to last night’s dinner since I went shopping for it on Sunday. I wanted something warm and seasonal and that’s just what I planned for the future of a fabulous acorn squash! So just before I headed out to my training session, I put the squash in the oven to roast while I got my fitness on. In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t the best idea to leave the oven on with a highly sensitive smoke detector, but I was almost to the gym when I had that revelation, so I crossed my fingers! Anyway the cranky retired fireman next door would unhappily handle an emergency so no big deal! If you’ve ever heard stories of my neighbor, you know he’s crazy as hell! So back to my yummy festive dinner.
Acorn squash with mushroom mix:
1 acorn squash, cut in half and seeded
3.5 oz shitake mushrooms, diced
8 oz baby bella mushrooms, diced
1 small onion, diced
½ zucchini, diced
Dried Thyme
Ground sage
Coconut oil
Olive oil
s&p

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Rub olive oil onto the squash, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast the squash for about 45 minutes or until soft. When the squash is almost done, melt a table spoon of coconut oil in a skillet, add mushrooms, zucchini and onion to a pan. Toss in the oil and sprinkle liberally with salt, pepper, thyme and sage. Toss around and sauté until the veggies are cooked. About 8 minutes. Then scoop the mushroom mix into the bowl of the squash. This is seriously delicious! In fact, while I ate it, I decided that this would be a PERFECT alternative to stuffing on Thanksgiving!





We all know that I’m a protein eater, so I paired the squash dish with a poultry seasoning inspired piece of mahi-mahi. And I swear, it worked perfectly as a Big Eater Small Body early Thanksgiving!



Pre Cooked
Rosemary & Prosciutto Grilled Mahi:

2 mahi-mahi fillets
6 slices prosciutto
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
Olive oil
Pepper

Pre-heat your grill for about 1 minutes. Sprinkle pepper on each side of the fish. On one side place 2 full sprigs of rosemary on each fillet. Then wrap all of it up with 3 pieces of prosciutto each. Drizzle the outside with a wee bit of olive oil so it doesn’t stick to the grill. Finally grill on each side for about 4-5 minutes.

These two dishes went perfectly together and with all the seasoning it was as comforting as Thanksgiving, but muuuuch healthier! And the prosciutto gets crispy….BONUS!!!! 

Salud!