Midwestern-Style Beer Bratwurst

bratwurst

As a Wisconsin-born American, I grew up loving three things: the Green Bay Packers, cheese, and bratwurst.  I still avidly participate in two of these three things (cheese, while delicious, usually makes my body sad).  We used to do a brat fry every weekend, even in the winters with average temperatures many degrees below freezing.

We always would grill the brats, and then cook them down in a beer sauce with butter and onion.  This delicious broth added flavor to the bratwurst while cooking them all the way through after browning them on the grill. After a conversation with my dad, he mentioned that at the weekend cook-outs at church functions, they were unable to cook with the beer because there are kids eating.  We all know the alcohol cooks off when boiled, but nevertheless, they would substitute beer with chicken broth.  This was a great find, and surprisingly just as awesome.

Alex Boake’s Super Garlic Cabbage Salad

Over the past year or so, we’ve been really fortunate to make friends in the “paleo” community, and today’s recipe is from our friend Alex Boake.  She actually learned this from her boyfriend’s dad, but nonetheless, this recipe caught my eye for a few reasons.  Garlic and cabbage were reasons one and two.  I love making cabbage slaw and cole slaw, but they are admittedly more time consuming.

Seafood Alfredo

This Mother’s Day, we were able to take over my mother’s kitchen and really go to town on cooking some recipes not just for food for the week, but for me to pay homage to my mom, who really turned me on to cooking.  One of my favorite recipes she used to always make for me is her seafood fettuccine alfredo, which is absolutely to die for.  It is also full of dairy and wheat.  While I love that recipe, it definitely doesn’t fit into my current lifestyle, and I would hate to remember it for how it would inevitably make me feel now than how great it tasted.

Spicy Tomato Basil Sauce

The following is a guest post we did about a week ago for Nom Nom Paleo.  Michelle, who maintains the blog with her family, is a cooking/blogging sensation and are one of the handful of places we first turned to when trying to figure out how to “be paleo” [more gushing below].  Be sure to check out her regular posts and giveaways, as well as download her iPad app–it’s beautiful, full of great content, and worth buying an iPad (or iPad mini) for if you don’t already have one.

spicy tomato basil sauce

Once upon a time, when Heather and I first started our own documented cooking adventures, we were pretty lost.  Still in the initial sticker shock/grief period of, “but what can I eat,” we spent a lot of time scanning the internet looking for “paleo-friendly” recipes and meal ideas.  Michelle’s blog was one of the first I came across, as I was a pretty intense tumblr addict.  Once I moved to Virginia and was juggling two jobs, tumblr went away, but nomnom stayed.  I later found out the connection between fitbomb and nom nom paleo, and I was excited to see a pair that really thought about fitness and health when it comes to movement and diet.  Plus, there’s the added benefit of following the family adventures since I’m not quite ready to enlist my own little army of helpers.