weekly paleo recipes, health tips, and more from a couple on the go
One Saturday night, Brent and I watched episode after episode of Anthony Bourdain’s show, A Cook’s Tour. I was nearly asleep when episode 7 of season 1, “Cod Crazy,” began. Anthony was traveling in Portugal, where salted cod has a historical and cultural significance. I woke up at the word cod. It caught my attention because just that afternoon we had bought cod. We didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do with it.
The other day on our Chicken & Shrimp Paella recipe, someone asked how it is that we make the cauliflower rice that goes with the recipe. We realize that there are probably a million other cauliflower rice recipes out there, but I wanted to add my two cents into the proverbial arena. (Google confirms 8.84 million results for “cauliflower rice”)
When in a pinch, I will occasionally visit the local Chipotle for a quick lunch; their carnitas or barbacoa salad with extra salsa, hot sauce, and guacamole is extremely filling, and not too hard on the wallet when it comes to healthy eat-out options. The other day, I wanted to attempt to recreate some of what I love about barbacoa at home.
Meatballs were a favorite of mine growing up. Just the other day, Heather and I realized that we have never actually made meatballs and pasta (zoodles or otherwise). Having been together almost 3 years, I immediately found this unacceptable and wanted to make things better.
We probably all have a family version of meatballs, usually including some combination of ground beef, lamb, veal, or pork, but as I’m trying to make 2013 less meat-focused, I added mushrooms. I “hated” mushrooms as a kid until I realized that I didn’t automatically hate everything my dad did (sorry, mom). You’ll enjoy these meatballs with marinara, on their own, or in the traditional sense with the “noodles” of your choosing.
Since dialing in my diet, and finding what works and what doesn’t in a pretty large magnitude, I’ve been trying to take care of the other essentials of health: sleep and movement. This could be considered a tool that falls within the quantified self movement, and while I’m not ready to go as far as Kamal Patel over at PainDatabase (though I love reading his material, I just know right now I’d drop the ball in terms of follow-through), this is a good start at being able to quantify your habits in order to enact change. Working two jobs, I often spend a lot of time in front of a computer during the day, or up too late working. It’s not always a perfect life, but I’m trying to be more aware of the time I spend idle, and the times when I don’t get enough sleep.
Since purchasing the Jawbone UP, I’ve been able to track how late I stay up and whether or not it has any tangible affect on my sleep quality or my overall mood over the next few days. The UP is a really cool product that has a bit of a tarnished history because of it’s first generation attempt about a year and a half ago. It had a great debut as a wearable fitness band, well before the Nike FuelBand, but the resulting product reliability took things downhill.
that paleo couple 