Paleo Carbonara Risotto

1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Cauliflower rice (put raw cauliflower in a food processor & process until it becomes rice-like, or chop finely)
1 cup vegetable stock
2 chicken breasts, sliced thinly
Button mushrooms, sliced
2 tsp paprika (or to taste)
~ 3 tbsp coconut cream
Salt & pepper
Prosciutto (bacon would also work, just cook it before you add it!)
Pine nuts, toasted

In a saute pan, fry onion & garlic with your fat of choice (I used coconut oil). When soft, add cauliflower. Continue frying until cauliflower is lightly browned.

Add vegetable stock, a little at a time, allowing the liquid to boil off a bit in between additions (the cauliflower rice won't absorb the liquid as well as rice does, so you'll end up with a bit of a 'sauce').

Once all the stock has been added, continue to boil on high until some of the stock has reduced. Add paprika and coconut cream. Stir well.

In another pan, fry chicken and mushroom in coconut oil (or other fat), until browned.

Add chicken and mushroom to risotto. Add small-ish pieces of prosciutto (I just used scissors to roughly cut pieces into it) & toasted pine nuts, season to taste, stir and serve.

Crockpots and Cauliflower

Winter is on it's way - I don't think we can deny it for much longer. I've joined the chorus of people complaining about the cold, the rain, and the darkness.

But there are a few things I love about winter. Snowboarding, open fires, and curling up under the duvet listening to the rain outside, all make the list. So do winter boots, cosy clothes, and red wine. And if I actually wrote this list down, you'd also find crockpots and cauliflower on there.

Crockpots (or slow cookers) are a fantastic way to have a warm, hearty meal waiting for you when you get home, without having to bribe you partner/flatmate into cooking. They also make cheaper cuts of meat taste amazing, so they're a great money-saver. Throw in some meat, onions, garlic, vegetables, herbs/spices, and some liquid (stock, tinned tomatoes, coconut cream...), set it going, and come back 8 hours later to dinner!

Cauliflower has been a staple in our house the last few weeks. Jojo inspired some breakfasts of fried "rice", we've had paleo "rice" risotto (recipe to come), and even cauliflower mash to accompany my latest crockpot creation. Yum!

So instead of moaning about winter (I mean seriously, it's not like it's a surprise - it happens every year!), let's raise a glass to crockpots and cauliflower, and enjoy what the season has to offer.

Crockpot chicken satay

4 chicken thighs
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tin coconut cream
3 tbsp almond butter
Paprika, curry powder, chili flakes
Salt & pepper

Combine all ingredients in the crockpot. Cook on low for 8-10 hours, stirring halfway through if possible.

Cauliflower mash
Boil or steam cauliflower until cooked, but not mushy. Drain. Add salt & pepper, then blend with a stick blender. If it needs some extra liquid, you could add a bit of coconut cream, butter, or coconut oil.

Serve chicken with cauliflower mash & enjoy the fact that there are hardly any dishes to do when you finish eating!

In control...or in denial?

I'm one of those people who like to feel 'in control', pretty much all the time. It's my comfort zone, my safety net. All is right in my world when I feel like my fingers are on all the right buttons.


See...I'm so organised I even took a cooler bag of food down to Palmerston North for the day, so I could ensure I stuck to my paleo diet!


When they're not - when things happen to throw my carefully crafted management strategies out of kilter - I panic. I feel lost, and anxious, and if I'm honest, a little betrayed - since when does life have the right to interfere with my plans?!

But life doesn't really care about my best-laid plans; my carefully thought-out timelines; or my ideas about what's best for me. Life goes ahead and interferes anyway - throws the cat amongst the pigeons, if you like.

And a good thing it does, too.

See, it turns out, sometimes I get so involved in my plans, timelines, schedules, and lists, that I forget to stop, look around, and appreciate what's going on right now. Sometimes my priorities - my faith, my relationships, my health - get buried underneath the lists and plans. Sometimes, life reminds me that I don't always know what's best.

So I'm going to try to be thankful for those times when life interrupts my conversation with myself. After all, what better opportunity to reevaluate, reassess, and re-prioritise?

Oh yeah...

...here's a recipe...

Cajun spiced broadbill with mango sweet chili salsa

Salsa

1 mango, diced

Sweet chili sauce (sorry, we keep forgetting to post Bear's primal sweet chilli sauce recipe)

Chopped, fresh coriander

Lemon juice

Salt

Mix everything together in a bowl and leave to 'develop'!

Broadbill

Broadbill loin

Cajun spice mix

2 tsp coconut oil

Mix cajun spice mix with coconut oil (if solidified, run jar under warm water until soft enough).

Coat broadbill with spice & oil mixture. Fry until just cooked through (it’s kind of like tuna – you don’t want to dry it out by overcooking).

Serve with salsa & salad.

Body Conscious

In a post a few months ago, I made a bold claim. I announced to the world (or at least, to the people who read this blog) that I loved my CrossFit/primal eating body.

I lied.

Or rather, I was misinformed. I thought I was loving my body. In reality though, I had just been attempting to beat it into submission. I hadn’t been nurturing and honouring it, I had been training it and depriving it, in the hope that it would one day look the way I wanted it to.

But what way was that? When it really comes down to it, what is ‘beautiful’?

Is beautiful skinny? Pretty? Blonde? Brunette? Is it confident? Rich? Successful? Is it really what’s on the inside that counts? And is strong really the new skinny?

Sure, society has it’s own definitions of beautiful, but so do each of us as individuals. I’m sure that many of us have our own idea of what we want our body to look like, but then aren’t we taught that we should be happy with the way we are? How do we strive for improvement while still accepting ourselves and loving ourselves as we are?

I had a great conversation with Cliff Harvey about this very same thing. Like many women, I’ve had a hard time seeing my body as beautiful. I’d love to have a leaner mid-section, a visible a 6-pack…but then I feel bad for not accepting my body the way it was…and I didn’t really believe I had the body type for a 6-pack anyway. What a dilemma! Well not so much anymore. Cliff shared a great saying with me: “Happy but not satisfied”. There’s nothing wrong with having goals and striving for improvement – a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo, I think it’s referred to as – but that doesn’t mean we have to be ‘unhappy’ with where we’re at currently. And as for my 6-pack, who says I don’t have the body type for it? If I tell myself I can’t, then I won’t. We create our own truth. So I’ve started to tell myself that I can; and it’s starting to become my own truth.

Returning to the idea of beauty now, I think we’d all agree that for many people, their definition of beauty includes some concept of fitness and health. But what happens when getting fitter means getting bigger? How do we reconcile that with the ‘feminine ideal’ of smallness? The other week, for the first time ever, I found a pair of pants (in my size) that wouldn’t fit over the increasing circumference of my thighs, and another that didn’t fit my calves. Oh the excitement! I’m actually getting muscly!! But while I love what my increasing size means in terms of my strength and capabilities, it’s kind of hard when all my clothes are getting tight because of it. In the past, tightening clothing have never been a good thing! Loving my new muscles doesn’t necessarily provide protection against the depressing feeling of not fitting into my clothes.

Happy but not satisfied. It can be a fragile balance, and one that’s not always easy to achieve. But now, every morning, I look at myself in the mirror and I accept myself. I look myself in the eye and tell myself that I love myself – right at this moment, for who I am and where I am. But I have goals, I have things that I’m striving for; and that’s ok too.

6-pack, here I come…