Category: Whole 30

Butternut Squash and White Sweet Potato Breakfast Hash

February 27, 2012October 16, 2012by Brent SchraderLeave a comment

Two weeks ago, we made that awesome Paleo Butternut Squash from Health-Bent.com with our own homemade sausage. (I can’t emphasize enough how delicious it was. It was so delicious!)

Now, not knowing what a “small butternut squash” really meant, we purchased a butternut squash that turned out to be much larger than necessary for that recipe. What did we do all the leftovers? Well, for nearly two weeks, it’s been sitting in a plastic container in our fridge. Finally, this morning I said for perhaps the 10th time in the past two weeks, “we need to find a way to use that butternut squash.” And Brent’s response was perfect: what about a hash?

Brilliant. 🙂

We also had plenty of leftover shredded white sweet potato, onions, and bell peppers. So, here’s is my latest variation on breakfast hash.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons Ghee
3 cups Butternut Squash, diced
4 cups shredded white sweet potato (diced would be great too, ours just happened to be shredded from our experimental lasagna)
1 large red bell pepper (approx. 1-1.5 cups)
1 cup onion (I used one and a half small yellow onions)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

Heat the Ghee in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
Sauté the onion and butternut squash for about 2-3 minutes, until the onion is nearly translucent.
Add the shredded white sweet potato and continue sautéing for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add the red bell pepper and continue sautéing and stirring for another 2-3 minutes or until the sweet potato is cooked through (it should change color from bright, starchy white to a dull ivory, almost like onion just before turning translucent).
If you want to add a little seasoning, like salt and/or pepper, sprinkle a pinch over the dish during the last minute or two of cooking.
Serve hot or cold.

Here are a few pictures of the process:

I think this new breakfast hash was really successful! I made a lot of it so we could portion it out for breakfast for at least a few days this week. We’ve been eating so many scrambled eggs and egg muffins this month, Brent and I are looking forward to this change of pace.

You could easily use regular sweet potato, shredded or diced, and of course toss in green or yellow or orange bell peppers if you like/have them laying around.

Lately, our grocery store has had very few regular sweet potatoes in stock and [oddly] has had lots of white sweet potatoes at the same price per pound of the few regular ones on the shelf. So, we’ve bought more white than regularly the past couple of weeks. However, there’s no flavor difference that I can tell. But I will say, I think the white sweet potato prevents the whole dish from getting too orange. I would have loved to toss in a green bell pepper for more color vibrance, but we simply didn’t have one on hand.

One final note: We love for our food to have a little heat, but I am well aware of my own lack of understanding in applying spices. If I’m not following a recipe, and Brent is too busy to lend a hand, I won’t experiment with that domain. This butternut squash and white sweet potato breakfast hash is naturally sweet and could easily support a little kick–so jazz it up for yourself.

And let us know what you think! What spices would you add?

Stewed Beef and Homemade Broth

February 27, 2012October 16, 2012by Brent Schrader1 Comment

This was an experiment of mine, which was a little terrifying at first but turned out well in the end. My attempts at saving money this month have been pretty great (a more flushed out post is to come once we’ve completed this Whole30), and I tried to go a step further by using beef neck bones.

Here’s what I had to work with:

6 beef neck bones (approx. 3 lbs)
3 celery stalks
1/3 large red onion
1/2 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
4 cups water

I added the celery, onion, and garlic to the slow cooker first, placed in the neck bones seasoned with the herbs above, and then filled the crock with water. I then covered and turned the slow cooker to low. At first, the smell was very sweet, and I was terrified I had just wasted all these ingredients, so I left it to cook overnight.

I planned on turning it off at 2:30 today (started at 6:00 the night before, for a total of 21 and one half hours) but we took longer running errands than expected. It finally got turned off at 4:00, and thank goodness I waited as long as I did. For a total of 22 hours, the meat is tender and juicy, and the broth is quite flavorful. Heather and I agree that it will probably need some salt once we use it for cooking, but for now we have most of it in the freezer.

The meat will serve over lettuce or as a snack with scrambled eggs. When all is said and done, this was not a bad way to spend a day and 8 dollars.

Mardi Gras Cabbage Slaw

February 22, 2012October 16, 2012by Brent SchraderLeave a comment

In order to celebrate the holiday (without the beer, beads, and other indulgences) I decided to bring some color and flare to an old faithful of mine. I added a bit more than what is shown, and I’ll explain below:

1 medium yellow bell pepper
1 medium red bell pepper
1/2 head of red cabbage
1/3 medium red onion
2 stalks celery
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp rice vinegar
Salt & Pepper (to taste)

Using our wonderful mandolin (that cut the living *#&$ out of my finger this weekend… which was totally my fault, but damn, it is sharp) I was able to quickly slice these down, and then add a 3-count of olive oil and rice vinegar.

To my chagrin, this actually turned out super colorful. All the purple, red, and yellow reminded me of the Mardi Gras celebrations my coworkers were having all day. So there you have it–Mardi Gras Cabbage Slaw.

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A new take on an old favorite: Lasagna

February 21, 2012October 16, 2012by Brent SchraderLeave a comment

White Sweet Potato & Ground Beef Lasagna

Last week, Brent and I tried two recipes that tingled our tastebuds and left us eager to experiment.

First, Health-Bent’s Paleo Butternut Squash Lasagna. We used our homemade sausage and it was OMG delicious. And it was beautiful too. 🙂 We gobbled it up in just a few meals, and it left us craving more. Thank you Health-Bent.com!!!

Second, we tried to follow a new spaghetti recipe, one that broke the typical Paleo mold of using spaghetti squash. Enter, PaSketti: Sweet Potato Spaghetti. Brent recently found the Paleo Parents’ website and I’ve been a little obsessed lately. 🙂 They are an inspiration. Seriously, a family with three growing boys successfully living a Paleo lifestyle?! I had wondered if it were possible, and it seems it is. I think I might actually be coming over the side of full-time Paleo for the rest of my life… maybe… almost. Brent is probably there; but I’m not totally sold on giving up cake forever just yet.

Anyways, back to the PaSketti: The white shredded sweet potato–the Giant was oddly out of regular sweet potatoes–looked a lot more like Spaetzle and got me really craving a good, ol’ fashioned Schnitzel with Spaetzle (yep, my family is German). So sometime this week or next, I might toy around with that idea.

Meanwhile, I made my own tomato sauce for the PaSketti, but I misjudged how much I needed and ultimately the entire dish turned out to be more like a brown-greyish mush. BUT IT WAS DELICIOUS. I mean, wow! Salty, savory, beefy… and there was a slight gravy-like quality to it. Brent and I couldn’t get enough, and it was gone way faster than we expected… portion control? Sometimes we’re not so good at that, haha.

Fast forward to this past Saturday when we were making our weekly grocery list. The amazing flavors of the Health-Bent lasagna and Paleo Parents PaSketti still lingering in our memories. Brent had an idea: why not add shredded sweet potato to the lasagna? Then, we thought, why not just use the sweet potato instead of the butternut squash? Also, we were all out of our homemade sausage; but, lasagna often uses ground beef. We had plenty of that in the freezer. So, out it came.

Sunday, after completing our shopping on Saturday and having defrosted the ground beef (and some other things I’ll mention in another post) overnight, we dove into cooking.

To make the lasagna, we started with shredding the sweet potato with our crazy food processor.

I also roasted a lot of tomatoes (12 to be exact–I had to do it in two batches) at 400 degrees F for 25 minutes.

Borrowing from the PaSketti recipe, we sautéed our 2 pounds of ground beef with 1 medium onion, 3 celery stalks and four or five cloves of garlic. (Note: Looking back, we wish we’d added more; perhaps a little kick from red pepper flakes, extra garlic and onion, or even just some salt and pepper to this mix.)

After the tomatoes were roasted, I simmered them on medium-low to cook them down a little further. Brent added a healthy dose of “pizza seasoning” (a mix of oregano, garlic, crushed red pepper, etc.).

Meanwhile, we preheated the oven to 400 degrees F.

Once all the parts were ready, we began the layering process. Sauce, ground beef mix, shredded white sweet potato, repeat.

We finished it off with sauce on top. (We actually used all the ground beef mix and most of the sauce, but because we shredded three large sweet potatoes, we still have a lot of that left over.) We covered it with the corning wear’s glass top and placed it in the oven for 35 minutes.

Our first plates didn’t look to pretty, so I took a picture of the dish instead with our first pieces cut out. It’s not the most stable of layered lasagnas; and, again, it could have used some more spices. We like our food to bite back a little 😉 But for an experiment, I think it turned out rather well.

And if my word isn’t good enough for you, just know that we have plowed through almost this entire corning wear dish in less than 24 hours. There’s honestly only one large piece (or two small pieces… ha, right) left of this goodness.

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Spicy Sausage and Bell Pepper Egg Muffins

February 17, 2012October 16, 2012by Brent SchraderLeave a comment

What can you do with a bunch of leftover homemade spicy sausage? Well, lots of things actually… and we’re still experimenting (more to come soon!). But the first thing that came to my mind was egg muffins…

I usually make 12-18 egg muffins at a time. Here are the ingredients for this batch:

10 – 12 large eggs
1/2 – 1 bell pepper, diced (I used red this time, but feel free to use green or yellow or any combination thereof that you like)
1/2 small yellow onion, diced (or two to three shallots–they’ll give out slightly different flavors, so choose whichever you like best)
1/2 – 1 cup of homemade spicy sausage
a pinch of salt
a dash of pepper
2 – 3 Tablespoons of olive oil (or enough to coat the muffin tin)
Oven pre-heated to 350 F

First, I fully cooked the sausage in a pan on the stove. Then, I mixed the cooked sausage and all the other ingredients in a large bowl. Next, I brushed each cup of the muffin tin (sides and bottom) with olive oil. Then, I used a ladle to fill the muffin tin with the egg mixture (I like to fill each cup in the tin 1/2- to 3/4-full). I baked them for approximately 20 minutes.