Not-so-quick but very easy soup

I first discovered/invented this recipe some years ago, visiting some friends who declared there was "nothing to eat" in their house. I didn't intend to prove them wrong, but I was able to whip up a delicious chunky vegetable soup (the friends are vegetarian) using what they had on hand. (I was probably fortunate that their fridge was reasonably well-stocked with vegetables.) Since then I've tweaked it and made it a bit more omnivorous, but it's really more of a guideline than a recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 large can tomato juice (what they call a number 10 can) - use low-sodium and add your own salt
  
• chicken stock (volume to 1/2 of the tomato juice can)
• 3-4 chicken breasts, cooked and diced
• diced vegetables - onion, garlic, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, parsnip, celery, whatever you've got, just add lots of it!
• seasoning to taste (salt, pepper, etc.)
• hot sauce
  

Instructions

1. Basically, put everything into a big pot, bring it to a boil, and simmer for 1 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly by water boiling off.
2. Add just a dash or two of a Louisiana-style cayenne hot sauce toward the end. It won't be enough to add much heat, but it will really bring the flavours out. (Of course, you can add more if you want to bring the heat - it's your soup!)

You can also omit the chicken and exchange the stock for water or vegetable stock if you really want to be vegetarian about it. This also reminds me, I really should post a recipe or link for making chicken stock one of these days...

Yeah, it's a simple recipe. Sometimes those are the best.

FAT isn't a four-letter word!

One of the "criticisms" of the paleo diet is that you're eating a lot of meat, and thus a lot of fat, and "all that artery-clogging saturated fat is bad for you". Except it's not. It's actually one of the better forms of fat for you, and it's a heck of a lot better than vegetable oils, which tend to go rancid at the drop of a hat (and rancid oils are BAD oils). Further, the conventional wisdom that "fat makes you fat" is completely wrong - fat is, in fact, the only one of the three macro-nutrients that can't be converted to sugar and crammed into your fat cells by insulin (which is how you get fat). And yes, consumption of animal fat increases your LDL ("bad cholesterol"), but increases your HDL ("good cholesterol") right alongside it.

I could rant about this for a couple of hours, but instead I'm going to give you two links. The first is a recent article from Mark's Daily Apple, and the second is the website for the guy who made the movie Fathead. I haven't seen Fathead yet, but it would be in my Netflix queue, if I used Netflix.

Go. Read. Learn why fat is good, and animal fat is very good. And tasty. And then go make some bacon. :-) Personally, I'm saving my pennies up to buy this cookbook.

Makin' mayo

Most commercially-available mayonnaise contains sugar, and as such is not really acceptable on the paleo diet. If you decide that you really want "mayo", you have three choices:

1. Accept that you're going to have to eat a bit of refined sugar with your tuna salad,
2. Hunt all over for a commercially-prepared brand that doesn't contain any (it exists, it's just very hard to find in some places), or
3. Make your own.

If you decide to go the third route, every cookbook you read will tell you the same thing - the oil has to be added to the emulsion very slowly. Here's a tip I picked up a while back, which has enabled me to make perfect mayonnaise every time: find a "squeeze bottle" (like you'd have ketchup and mustard in at a picnic - check the local "dollar store"), and place the oil in that, and use that to pour the oil in a small, steady stream into the blender (assuming you're using a blender rather than whisking by hand).

Recipes for mayonnaise are literally a dime a dozen, and they all contain pretty much the same basic ingredients - oil (olive oil is suitably primal, but unfortunately this is one place we can't use coconut oil), mustard (which helps the emulsion hold together so your mayonnaise doesn't separate), and raw egg, along with some salt and pepper and maybe lemon. The raw egg can be problematic for some - only use fresh eggs from a reliable source, refrigerate anything you don't use promptly, and use it all up within a few days. Here is one possible recipe, which also suggests using almond oil or walnut oil in place of the olive oil.

That link also notes that homemade mayonnaise has a much lighter taste than the commercial stuff. Don't be afraid to "zip it up" - add a dash of cayenne pepper to the mix, or maybe a couple of roasted cloves of garlic.

One of my favourite things to make that requires mayonnaise is "tuna wraps", using lettuce as a method of conveying the tuna. These would also be good with crab, chicken, or other such meat, and you could add chopped onions or peppers to the mix to spice it up a bit.

Ingredients

• 1 can tuna in water, drained (or use other similar meat, such as chicken, turkey, crab)
• mayonnaise to taste
• leaves of butter lettuce or similar

Instructions

1. Mix the tuna or other meat with the mayonnaise (and any other ingredients you'd care to add).
2. Place a dollop (1-2 Tbsp) of the tuna mixture in the middle of a lettuce leaf, roll it up, and tuck the ends in.
3. Repeat as necessary.

Book Review: The Paleo Diet

The Paleo Diet, written by Loren Cordain, Ph. D., is one of the few books out there specifically devoted to the paleo way of eating. It's divided into three main sections, "Understanding the Paleo Diet", "Losing Weight and Preventing and Healing Disease", and "The Paleo Diet Program".

The first section covers the basics of the diet - the "rules", as it were. And, unfortunately, this is where it starts to go wrong. While Dr. Cordain makes a strong case for the fact that we're not that different from our ancestors going back a thousand generations, and thus grain and starch and refined sugars are not things that should be in our diet, he still is unwilling or unable to make the final leap - fat. He claims that the meat eaten by our ancestors would have been the leanest muscle meat, whereas it is well documented in modern-primitive cultures that the fattiest portions (such as brain tissue) are highly coveted delicacies. Later in the book, he also makes a strong case for Omega-3 fatty acid consumption, but then advocates using flax seed oil. It is well established that the kind of O3 fatty acid in flax seed oil, ALA, is not the kind our body needs, and is only weakly converted to DHA and EPA within the body.

The second section of the book discusses the health aspects of the diet. Not too much to argue with here, except he continues his apparent hatred of animal fats, stressing the leanness of proteins to be consumed. He also relies on BMI tables, whereas modern medical thinking is moving away from using the BMI as an indicator of health (given that it was never intended for that in the first place). Curiously, he does discuss in this section how grains raise the "small, dense" (AKA dangerous) LDL cholesterol, but doesn't seem to discuss much about how the fats from meat raise the HDL (good) cholesterol and thus improve the overall HDL/LDL ratio in the body. If he did this, he might have to stop stressing "lean" protein so much, though.

More than half the book is taken up by the third part, "The Paleo Diet Program", because it contains six weeks' worth of recipes and food plans, as well as a discussion of what is and is not allowed under his version of the diet. He also advocates a three-stage introduction to the diet, where in the first stage you can "cheat" three times a week at "open meals", in the second stage twice a week, and in the third stage once a week. Oddly, he allows diet sodas "in moderation" in his version of the diet, as well as low-fat salad dressings (which tend to contain a lot of sugar).

In summary, while much of the background information Dr. Cordain gives in this book is quite useful, his conclusions are at best coloured by "conventional wisdom". Unless you truly believe that our neolithic ancestors dined on the breast meat of wild chickens, with a side of lettuce smothered in low-fat thousand island dressing, and washing it down with a diet cola, you might be better served looking elsewhere for solid day-to-day advice.

It probably seems like I'm being unduly hard on this book. Maybe I am. But it just seems to "go halfway", and misses the endgame, in my opinion. But what do I know? I'm just a caveman.

Bet you never had broccoli-slaw like this!

You'll often see "convenience packs" in the grocery store, even in the produce section. Cauliflower and/or broccoli pre-cut, pre-washed, and ready to steam or boil, for example. While it is more expensive because you're paying for the additional processing, the vegetables themselves are just as healthy as the rest of the produce section.

One of the things we do buy in the pre-packaged bags of vegetables is "broccoli-slaw". Basically, it's shredded "hearts" (AKA stems) of broccoli, carrot, and red cabbage. If you added some mayonnaise it probably wouldn't be bad, but if you saute it up, it's pretty darn good, in my opinion.

Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp oil (coconut, olive, or similar - you can also try a "chili oil" for a spicier dish)
• 1 medium onion, skinned and sliced
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 x 340g (12oz) bag of "broccoli slaw"
• juice of one lemon or lime
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Slice the onion in half, remove the peel, and then slice into thin "half-rings".
   
2. Heat the oil in a saute pan or wok.
3. Saute the onion in the oil. Add the garlic after a couple of minutes.
4. Add the bag of broccoli slaw and saute.
5. When it's just about done, pour the citrus juice in and mix well.
6. Season to taste.
   

Consider the cabbage

Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil's Dictionary, defined a cabbage as "a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head." It's actually a bit smarter than that.

When I was growing up (and this isn't the first time I've stated that in a post like this, I must be getting old), cabbage was used for two things in our household: coleslaw, and cabbage rolls. I wasn't actually fond of the latter at the time, and now I can't eat them anyway, as my mother's secret recipe has rice in it. So for years my primary source of cabbage-y goodness was coleslaw.

But I'm older now, and I've discovered other uses for this green globe. Furthermore, it turns out it's good for me, too. Dietarily, it's high in vitamin C, glutamine, riboflavin, and fibre, and low in simple carbohydrates. Raw, it has a somewhat pungent taste, but cooking tends to soften that. Here's a couple of different ways to prepare cabbage:

1. Saute it. Just slice it into thin sections (1/4 to 1/2 inch) vertically (discarding the stem), break the sections into strands, and saute in oil (coconut, palm, or similar - maybe even try bacon fat?) until softened and "translucent" all over, and browned in spots.

2. Boil-and-bake it. Quarter the cabbage, leaving the stem on, toss it into a pot of boiling water with a whole star anise pod, and boil for 8 minutes. Once it's looking a bit soggy, brush some melted butter onto it, place it into a buttered baking dish, and bake at high heat (450 or so) until it's starting to brown and crisp. (You'll want to keep a close eye on it so it doesn't burn.)

Cheesy Frittata

Personally, I'm not a fan of eggs. Mrs. Caveman insists that this frittata is so full of cheese and other stuff that you barely taste the egg, but I'm not convinced. Regardless, it's one of her favourites, so I'm posting it here. It comes from the cookbook "Everyday Grain-Free Gourmet" by Jodi Bager and Jenny Lass, available through Whitecap Books.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound grated cheddar cheese (or a blend, like a tex-mex blend)
• 1/4 cup almond flour
• 1/4 cup cilantro or Italian parsley, chopped
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1 cup white mushrooms, chopped
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 5 large eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 350F
2. Combine the cheese, almond flour, and parsley in a bowl.
3. Saute the onion and garlic in the oil over medium heat until the onion is starting to turn translucent. Do not let the garlic burn. (I usually add the garlic after the onions have been in the pan for a couple of minutes, myself.)
4. Add the green and red peppers and the mushrooms, and saute until the water that comes out of the vegetables evaporates.
5. Combine the eggs, yogurt, salt, and pepper in a small bowl.
6. Combine everything with the cheese, almond flour and parsley mixture.
7. Dump into an 8-inch square casserole dish and back for 40-50 minutes, until nicely browned and set.
8. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Makes lots, so leftovers can be reheated the following day. Personally, I'll have a nice chupaqueso.