Quick Pot Roast Recipe
28 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Recipes, Uncategorized
Boy, was this yummy!
Mushrooms and onions go well with beef. Thyme goes well with mushrooms. Parsley and black pepper go with everything. Put them all together and you get happy taste buds!
The mushroom flavor really permeated the beef. I served this with the veggies on the side. You could whiz the veg into the juices to make a gravy if you want. I’m going to use the juice later this week for soup.
Excellent Pot Roast
- 3 pound roast (I had an arm roast)
- 8 0z package mushrooms (baby bells were on sale last week)
- small onion (you know, a yellow onion from the 3 pound bag)
- thyme
- parsley
- cracked pepper
Salt your roast and set aside.
Stem and quarter your mushrooms. Chop onion to the size you like. Put both of those into the bottom of your slow cooker insert. Add thyme, parsley and cracked pepper.
Put roast on top of mushrooms and onions.
You can brown the surface of the roast before sticking it in your insert. I don’t bother. Maybe it would boost the flavor, maybe not. I do know that would create one more dirty dish.
Turn slow cooker on high and cook for three hours or so.
Monday menu and recipes
26 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in low-carb, lunch, Meal Plans, Recipes, Uncategorized
Last week was a bad mental health week.
I didn’t eat much solid food, mostly protein smoothies. George ate mostly out of the freezer. I did manage to fix the steak for Friday evening and buffalo chicken salad for supper Saturday. I was doing better toward the end of the week.
Consequently, this week’s menu is partially recycled from last week. I hope to not have to make a grocery run this week, apart from cream.
Food during the day will likely be catch as catch can. I suspect tuna salad will be served more than once. As long as I can get breakfast into George he will eat only a light lunch around 1pm.
On to the menu, then a couple recipes.
Monday
- philly cheese wrap, inspired by a post from Cleochatra last week
- creamy coleslaw
Tuesday
- Parmesan baked chicken
- salad
Wednesday
- roast beef
- buttered turnips
- chopped lettuce salad with french dressing
Thursday
- speedy garlic shrimp
- spinach salad
Friday
- ribeye
- Parmesan broccoli
- olive salad
Saturday
- leftover beef soup–recipe below
- cheese biscuits
Sunday
- eggs Florentine for brunch
- something with chicken thighs for supper
Friday is steak night. This is a new thing for us.
I can buy two weeks worth of very nice steak for each of us for the same price we would pay for one meal out. We’re trying to avoid feeling the need to eat out by doing this.
The cheese biscuits are a coconut flour recipe I’m working on. George says they aren’t biscuits, they’re soft cookies. I’ll post the recipe when I’ve got it figured out just right.
I’m also considering pumpkin bars. There was a recipe on Elana’s Pantry today that looks promising.
I’ll alter it to use both coconut flour and and almond meal. The agave syrup needs to be replaced, as well. I generally use dairy in the same amount as the syrup and enough liquid sucralose to get the equivalent sweetness. I’ll likely add a quarter or half teaspoon sorghum syrup to deepen the flavor.
Leftover Beef Soup
This is a leftover makeover of roast beef.
- leftover pot roast
- Brussels sprouts
- carrot
- 14 oz can of tomatoes
- onion powder (not salt)
- beef broth, this will be the juice left from cooking the roast in the slow cooker and supplemented with beef base if needed (I need to make both chicken and beef broth)
Chop the post roast, dice the carrot and quarter the sprouts.
Add carrots to the pot with your choice of fat. Briefly saute the carrots, just to soften them. Add onion powder, beef, tomatoes and broth.
Bring to the boil, then add sprouts and simmer long enough to combine flavors to your liking.
Nutty Monkey Protein Smoothie
- !/4 cup coconut cream or milk
- 1/2 cup water
- enough ice to blend to the consistency you like
- 1 scoop or so of your favorite protein powder
- 1 big spoonful (about 2 tablespoons) of almond butter
- 1 teaspoon banana flavor (use a banana if you aren’t concerned about carbs)
- 1/2 teaspoon coconut flavor (if you want to boost the coconut taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Whiz it all up in your blender and enjoy.
Hey, if you made it this far, wave at me in the comments.
Submitted to Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com.
Weekly Menu
17 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in low-carb, Meal Plans, Uncategorized
It looks like chicken week. That would be because I got a super-duper deal on chicken and eggs at my favorite grocery store. Great deals because the store is closing. Boo, hiss!
SUNDAY PREP
- cook double recipe chicken soup and freeze extra
- double sauteed apples and freeze extra–move to Monday
MONDAY
- day-fried eggs, bacon, cherry tomatoes
- evening-garlic shrimp, spinach and avocado salad
- prep-cut up chicken for salads, bake herbed chicken, set out hamburger to thaw, fry up bacon for the week, boil dozen eggs
TUESDAY
- day-autumn chicken soup, mixed greens salad
- evening-bacon-burger, apple slices and cheese
- prep-marinate chicken in buffalo sauce, set out chili to thaw
WEDNESDAY
- day-buffalo chicken salad, strawberries
- evening-naked chili dogs, slaw
- prep-marinate chicken
THURSDAY
- day-thai chicken salad
- evening-herb baked chicken, chopped salad, turnips
- prep-set out steak, fix deviled eggs
FRIDAY
- day-deviled eggs, bacon, radishes
- evening-steak, salad, parmesan broccoli
- prep-fix olive salad
SATURDAY
- day-chicken caesar salad, strawberries
- evening-garlic pork steak, olive salad, sauted apples
- prep-make quiche, set meatloaf and cauliflower out to thaw
SUNDAY
- day-quiche florentine, strawberries
- evening-meatloaf, greenbeans, cheesey cauliflower
- prep-finalize menu, grocery store, double and cook at least two recipes
Submitted to Menu Plan Monday at orgjunkie.com.
Menu
11 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in low-carb, Meal Plans
I’m trying to be more deliberate about prepping several recipes at once and picking recipes that share ingredients.
You will n0tice that squash, cherry tomatoes and chicken all make more than one appearance this week. I’ve doubled several recipes for the freezer. Meatloaf and chili both have sauteed onions and bell peppers in them.
I made the mistake of prepping the chili veggies first. I add the spice to the sauteed veggies to bloom them a bit before adding to the Crock Pot. If I had sauteed the meatloaf veggies first I wouldn’t have had to wash the pan between the two.
What’s for Supper
- Miso soup
- Thai Chicken Salad
- summer squash sauteed with five spice
chicken is marinating
- tuna salad
- apple & cheese
- meatloaf
- cheesy mashed cauliflower
- green beans
doubled meatloaf recipe and baked, wrapped one loaf to freeze and sliced one loaf
doubled mashed cauliflower recipe, portioned it out and put it in freezer
- lemon chicken
- summer squash sauteed with Italian herb mix
- cherry tomatoes sauteed with olive oil and lemon
will brine, marinate and bake chicken Monday or Wednesday, doubling recipe
- spicy steak
- garlic sauteed spinach
- cherry tomatoes sauteed in balsamic vinaigrette
- chili-cheese dogs
- slaw
fixed big batch of chili and portioned out for freezing
- lemon-ricotta pancakes
- berries smashed and sweetened for topping
- bacon
Submitted to Menu plan Monday
On the road
08 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in low-carb, lunch, on the road, Uncategorized
We’re working in southern Minnesota this week. On the road for four days.
Maintaining a low-carb diet while traveling can be a challenge. We have a couple strategies.
The first thing we do is pack a cooler with food that won’t be dangerous if it doesn’t stay refrigerator cold. This category is usually filled by cooked eggs of some sort, cheese, nuts, prepped fruit and veggies and cooked meat. I’ll tell you more about that when I can get some pictures and have time to post a recipe.
The second thing we do is make smart choices when we do eat out. We generally eat one main meal a day on the road and eat what’s in the cooler otherwise.
On the expensive end of eating out, there are steak houses and places like Red Lobster, Olive Garden and Applebees. Olive Garden? Yes, just ask for broccoli instead of pasta and skip the breadsticks. It’s the pasta sauce you like, anyway.
Less expensive options include various fast food outlets. Many have added salads and other options to their menus to appeal to the low-fat crowd. By asking them to hold the croutons and picking salads with unbreaded chicken it is entirely possible to get a reasonable meal.
If you want a burger you can ask for it without the bun. Or just not eat the bun if you are going through the drive-through.
Living in the Midwest, our favorite fast food outlet is Culver’s. Yum, butter burgers! A bunless burger wrapped in a lettuce leaf will come in between 2 and 6 carbs.
George can eat more carbs on days he’s performing. He burns through them pretty quickly and doesn’t see a real change in the scale.
At Culver’s, a small order of fries is roughly equivalent in carbs to a bun. The fries are much more satisfying for him. And I’m far less worried about tubers than wheat products. It’s still an indulgence, though.
We aim to keep to 20 grams of carbohydrate when we eat out. I do better closer to 10 grams. It’s not just the gross number of carbs consumed in a day that’s important. How many you consume at any given meal is important.
If y0ur carb allowance is 50 0r 60 grams a day, eating almost all of that at any one meal will set you up for a blood sugar roller-coaster. Blood sugar will tend to rise steeply then plummet. This leads to the dreaded “carbo-nap.”
That’s really why everybody is so sleepy after a holiday meal. It isn’t the tryptophan in the turkey. It’s the sugar and starch in the mashed potatoes and the noodles and the candied yams and the pie.
I’m currently developing a safe-list for George to carry on his Touch so we don’t have to remember what is okay to eat at any given spot. The nutrition information companies provide at their websites is tremendously helpful in this regard.
I got a picture taken last night between starting this post and finishing up today. So here’s a sneak preview of my extra yummy bacon quiche.
Under pressure
05 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
How unoriginal can I be with a title?
My mother got me a pressure cooker for Christmas last year. I’ve recently been looking for more information about converting recipes to the pressure cooker.
It seems pressure cookers are most treasured for their ability to make quick work of beans and grains. We don’t eat those, though. The low-carb thing, you know.
What I remember from my childhood is that they make bad pot roast and good mashed potatoes.
My research hasn’t gotten very far. I’ve found a couple web sites that are difficult to use. I was hoping for a blog something along the lines of Stephanie O’Dea’s A Year of Slow Cooking. I haven’t found anything like that.
Going low tech I started looking through my cookbook collection. I found two useful tidbits of information.
My 1972 edition of Joy of Cooking tells me that “cooking time at 15 lbs. pressure takes only about 1/3 the total time. . .that it takes to cook food in conventional ways at boiling temperatures.” So I have a guideline for cooking times. Since I can’t exactly take the lid off and check my progress that’s kinda important.
Then I checked my very favorite cookbook, The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. There is a section called “Slow Cooker and Pressure Cooker.” Several recipes are for the same dish cooked by each method. That looks like a guide to converting recipes to me.
The other tidbit I picked up from that cookbook was that meat will toughen if the pressure is released too quickly so it should be allowed to release naturally for a period of time before manually releasing .
Joy of Cooking says that pressure cooking toughens meats and that it should only be used on meats when cooking time is a greater consideration than optimum results. Joy of Cooking also says that pressure should instantly be released when cooking time is completed by running the cooker under cold water. So, there you are.
My chicken tikka masala was a little tough Saturday night when I released the pressure through the valve as soon as I turned off the gas. So I’ll plan better and allow enough time for the pressure to release naturally before releasing manually.
I pressure cooked a tomato and garlic soup recipe tonight really didn’t need that treatment, just for the science experiment. The cool thing was that after releasing the pressure and taking the lid off it was still simmering. I had to let it cool off before I could stick an immersion blender in it. Have to be careful with a stick blender in hot soup. Ask me how I know.
Fun was had for the day and the mission will continue. There are about half a dozen pressure cooker cookbooks at my local library to check out. My America’s Test Kitchen cookbook has the duplicate recipes I can study. My aim isn’t necessarily to find recipes to cook from. I’m more concerned with coming up with good guidelines for converting recipes and improvising new recipes.
Here’s a super cool macro shot (because I just got a new camera) of the meatballs that I made to go into the soup. Cooked them in the oven, not the pressure cooker. Another day, maybe.
What’s for supper this week?
20 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in low-carb, Meal Plans, Recipes
Rib-eye steak with baby bok choy & tomatoes.
Buffalo chicken salad with blue cheese dressing, carrots & celery sticks.
Middle-eastern meatballs & Israeli salad.
Crockpot salmon with salad & roasted summer squash & pepper medley .
Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes, from one of the Protein Power books, with berries mashed & sweetened on top & bacon on the side.
Wednesday night I’m fixing supper for George’s friends so we will have a carby fall treat, ham & bean soup with cornbread. Unfortunately, it’s warming up again, so I should save this for later but everyone is expecting it now. Oh, well.
I will soak the beans this evening and make the ham & bean soup tomorrow in the slow cooker. That will give it a day to age in the frig. Everybody knows soup is better the next day.
The chicken (poached when I bought it), meatballs and squash mix all come from my prepped food in the freezer stash.
This is my first post on Menu Plan Monday at I’m an Organizing Junkie. If I can figure out how to make it work, that is.
