Balsamic Chicken and Onions

25. January 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Entree, Recipe · Tags: , , , , , , ,

It seems like I’ve only been posting Primal/Paleo recipes that are recreations of gluten and sugar filled foods. And I guess that’s what people might not know how to do without some research, but eating Primal is so easy when you just focus on foods you already eat that fit into that category by their very nature. An example of that is a regular meat and veggie dish like Balsamic Chicken and Onions. I used to make this dish all the time years ago…well before trying to eat healthier and certainly well before eating Primal/Paleo. So when I was trying to figure out a new dish to make for dinner to break up the monotony, I remembered an old dish and decided to take it out for a spin again. Enjoy!
Balsamic Chicken and Onions

about 10 chicken thighs or 4-5 chicken breasts

2 Tbs butter or bacon grease

2 Red or yellow onions sliced into rings

1 C sliced mushrooms (optional)

1/3 C Balsamic Vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste
1. Brown both sides of chicken in butter over medium high heat.
2. Add sliced onions and stir until onions are on bottom of pan and chicken is on top of onions.

3. Add balsamic, salt and pepper then cover and cook for about 15 minutes on medium low heat.

4. Add mushrooms, cover and cook for another 5 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

Chicken Adobo

30. November 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Entree, Recipe · Tags: , , , , , , ,

Stephanie here…

Have you ever had Filipino Adobo? I have. A friend of mine is of Filipino heritage and she introduced me to short ribs Adobo. Delicious, falling off the bone, amazing-ness they were. I didn’t have any short ribs last night but had seen recipes for Chicken Adobo. All of them called for bone-in and all I had were boneLESS. Sheesh, couldn’t I just get the point and make something else. Nope. No can do. Once I get in the mood for a certain dish, that is IT! Adobo is tangy and a bit spicy the way I was taught to make it. Like pad thai, there are many variations on this dish.

Chicken THIGH Adobo

2 lbs. boneless chicken thighs
1/4 c. vinegar (most recipes call for white, but I’ve used others)
1/4 c. Coconut Aminos
pepper (I put a heaping tablespoon of the ground pepper in mine, like it to ZING)
heap of minced garlic
2 bay leaves

Place the thighs in a nice sized stockpot or deep skillet. Cover with vinegar/coconut aminos and enough water to cover the thighs. Add pepper, garlic and bay. Bring to a boil and cover. Cook about 20 minutes, turning chicken over about halfway through. During the last five minutes, I like to break the chicken up with a strong spatula into smaller pieces and then leave the lid placed so that the sauce can vent and cook down into a thicker sauce.

Serve with some steaming cauliflower and a salad.
Put a bottle of Sriracha on the table for the folk who need MORE spice. Enjoy!

Side note: Some cooks like to brown the chicken before adding the other seasonings. Some cooks like to marinate the chicken before hand. Good for them. I’m usually in a hurry at din-din time. So, give it a go and see what you come up with. If you don’t like pickles or other tangy treats, don’t EVEN try this dish. You won’t be up to it.

Sorry no photos, as we ate it. Will try next time!

Another Pad Thai Option

12. November 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Entree, Lunch, Review · Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Stephanie here…

Thursdays are Asian Food Night at our place. Last week, I made a new version of pad thai for my family, a ketchup containing one which is unusual for us. It came from this recipe, and I had some broccoslaw that I steamed for my own noodles and made a paleo modified version. I really liked it. It’s not my favorite, but it was really tasty and hit the pad thai spot. If you’re an adherent to a certain pad thai school, this one may not be for you. One of the Thai chef’s notes that I was reading said that there are as many variations of pad thai as there are cooks and kitchens! Here’s a peek at my prep plate for this dish…

So, my modifications were to replace the ketchup with a paleo friendly one (Organicville has agave as it’s sweetener, for example), brown sugar with a bit of honey (I don’t like pad thai to be too sweet), coconut oil for the peanut oil, and use a good fish sauce! Also, pad thai isn’t pad thai to me whithout piles of cilantro, so I added that in as you can see on my prep plate. IF you’re going to take the time to make a pad thai dish, do yourself a favor and prep everything first into plates or piles as they go in at different times. It’s really NOT hard, just takes a bit of preparation!

P.S. I eat peanuts. They don’t bother me and there is nothing that tastes like them. If you don’t, choose something else for a crunch!

More Reason to Buy Organic Poultry

25. October 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Of Interest!, Science · Tags: , , ,

Stephanie here…

Remember this sort of lesson in our college ecology classes:

Hold that thought. Enter other contaminants that are often called pharmaceuticals.

A recent lawsuit filing has me chewing on this lesson and organic foods, i.e. poultry, and how imperative it is to use it instead of conventional. A group of Arkansas farmers are suing some large chicken producing companies and a large pharma company over the chicken litter that they have provided. These farmers have been getting high arsenic numbers in the rice they produce and they are convinced that it’s due to medications that the chickens are taking that is passing through to the litter that they then place on their rice crops.

From the article in Arkansas Business:

The suit says that chicken litter, which contains chicken waste, is used by rice farmers as fertilizer. This litter winds up contaminating the soil and, ultimately, the rice crop, according to the suit.
The poultry growers “knew that excessive arsenic in chicken litter used as fertilizer on many rice farms in Arkansas would contaminate the entire U.S. rice crop and infiltrate the general U.S. rice supply, and that public news about such arsenic contamination would result in devastating financial losses to U.S. and Arkansas rice producers …,” the suit says.

Remember the study out of Stanford recently claiming that veggies grown organically are no better for you than the conventional ones. Once again, this reminds me of how they were missing the boat. What concerns me is what organics do NOT have. I’ll have my veggies and meats and poultry without a side of weird science, thank you.

If you missed the Stanford study and it’s fall out. Here are some interesting thoughts on it:
Huffington Post sounds off.
LA Times editorial
And of course, Mark Sisson has something to say regarding this.

Wishing I had space for chickens like Angie has!

Thai Basil Garlic Chicken – Gai Pad Krapow

16. August 2012 · 2 comments · Categories: Entree, Recipe · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Stephanie here…

After eating a wonderful ground chicken dish a few months back at a local Thai restaurant, I thought, “Hey, I can make this!” That is what I usually end up thinking, because I’m cheap. Well, this one took a few tries to learn what I liked and what I didn’t like. I do like this dish made with ground chicken thighs, I do not like it as well made with ground chicken breasts, but it was not bad, just dry and lacking in flavor compared to it’s dark counterpart. I’ve consulted many recipes in cookbooks, many thoughts online about this dish. This one is a major mixture of all I’ve learned and is very simple. Most of all, it’s very like the one I had at the restaurant!

Gai Pad Krapow
1 pound of ground chicken thighs (make your own with your handy little food processor)
2-4 T. coconut oil
several cloves of minced garlic (how much do you like the garlic?)
2 cups of basil leaves, ribboned (I used Thai basil in most of my attempts, but the regular basil was delish too)
1 t. or more of Huy Fong’s Chili Garlic Sauce
2 T fish sauce
1 T honey

Have all ingredients ready to go. Mix chili garlic sauce, fish sauce, honey and set aside.Heat a cast iron skillet (I used a 12 inch skillet) over medium high heat. Heat the oil and add the ground chicken. Saute until pink is no more. Add garlic and stir fry for 1-2 minutes. Add basil and sauce and stir fry until basil wilts. Serve by itself or with some cauliflower rice.

I also added zucchini and mushrooms to several of the different makings of this and it was wonderful that way too. Give it a try. It’s a lovely addition to my paleo options!

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