Category Archives: Meals

Easy Does It–Liverwurst burgers

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As promised, we shook things up with our normal food routine and added some organ meat to one meal this week.  See this post for the story of how my significant hair loss indicated a need for more Vitamin A, found abundantly in organ meats, particularly liver. The organ meat is typically not palatable but we vowed to try to make it work in our day-to-day Paleo meals and report back to you on how we did.

We decided to start right away, but truthfully I wasn’t completely comfortable with this experiment.  If I thought about it too much, I would have lost my nerve. So I decided it wasn’t too scary to pick up some processed pork liver in the form of Braunschweiger from our local grocery store. I know it’s not the quality grass-fed beef liver that really gets a you a bang for your buck, but baby steps.

 

 

 

 

The ingredients weren’t the greatest, but the number 170% (next to daily intake for Vitamin A) gave me the courage I needed to place it in my shopping cart.

 

 

 

 

My first attempt was gutsy. I choked down 2 slices and then placed a half slice on Charlotte’s lunch plate and told her it was a new kind of salami. She tried it and then set it right back down on the plate. 

 

 

 

 

Our next attempt was more thought-out. With some strategic spices, we’d sneak it into the weekly burgers that we grind at home with grass-fed meat and sausage.

We combined 1 pound of grass-fed ground beef with 1 pound mild Italian sausage and 7 ounces of pork liverwurst (Braunschweiger).  To the meat mixture, we added 1 diced shallot, 1 egg, the juice of 1 whole lemon, (1 TBSP salt), 1  TBSP pepper, 1 TBSP garlic powder, 1 TBSP Worcestershire sauce, 1 TBSP spicy brown mustard, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp chili powder. This makes 7-10 patties.

 

 

 

 

We combined all the meats using our grinder attachment.

 

 

 

 

 

We added all of the above spices and ingredients to the meats and formed patties.

 

 

 

 

We barbecued the patties for 2-4 minutes each side for rare burgers. A few of us had cheeseburgers.

 

 

 

 

We topped the burger with fixin’s and served ours with some steamed broccoli.

 

 

 

 

The results: definitely edible. I would dare to say tasty and delicious, but the processed pork liver was salty, making for a salty burger, especially considering we added additional salt to the meat. But overall, the liver taste was well disguised and the girls ate the their entire burgers without any problem, although we did give them a special treat in the form of some ketchup.

Next time we cook with processed liver, we will leave out the added salt. If we were to cook with real grass-fed beef livers, we would probably leave the salt in. Stay tuned for that post. I’ve hit a bit of a snag in my search for the real grass-fed beef livers. My source will not have them available until summer, so yesterday I casually asked the butcher at my local grocery store if he had any beef liver (like I do this all the time) and surprisingly he had a whole section of organ meats–beef heart and tongue, but no liver. I wasn’t brave enough to try the heart or tongue, but I did walk away from the meat counter with a promising feeling like I wasn’t the only one in the world eating offal.

It occurred to me that if you are new to the Paleo world, you may think eating Paleo means eating weird or different foods, so therefore we are weirdos and this diet is not for you. In order to show the awesomeness that Paleo is and that we really are pretty normal folks, I took some photos of some delicious Paleo meals we had over the weekend. 

Saturday night’s dinner was grilled Rib-eye steaks with peeled white potato french fries (fried in coconut oil), steamed artichokes, and grilled broccoli stalks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday morning’s breakfast was coconut flour waffles, eggs fried in grass fed butter, bacon, and fresh berries. (Thanks Gina for sharing the waffle recipe with us. We loved it!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday evening’s dinner was pasture-raised barbecued chicken with grilled asparagus spears and roasted cauliflower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look delicious? Feel free to comment or ask questions about these meals and for more great Paleo meals and recipes, check out the cooking blogs on the Paleo Community page.

Following my own advice–texture aversions

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I had just finished posting the information on Recommendations & Advice about knowing which textures your child has aversions to, how to carefully incorporate new foods, and the importance of understanding their likes and dislikes. I had all of this information fresh in my mind, and then….I came down with a cold.

What does that have to do with texture aversions? Well, every Monday I make my girls a hot almond and pecan cereal. (Recipe courtesy of Sarah Fragoso here: almondcereal) I use my Blendtec and grind up apples, cinnamon, nuts, and water. I make a big batch and it usually lasts the first few days of the week. Typically, I run the blender a couple of times to make sure that I grind up any large pieces of nuts or apple.

This Monday I woke up in a NyQuil induced haze and forgot to run the blender twice. This resulted in large pieces of nuts and apples in Charlotte’s cereal that I was not aware of. This must have really grossed her out because yesterday she sat in her chair and stared at her cereal for a very long time before I grog-i-l-y noticed that she wasn’t eating. By this time the cereal was cold, and she was begging me to help her eat it. I prompted her to eat it herself and reminded her that there were no big pieces. She finished it reluctantly, and I didn’t think of it again.

Until, today. When the frustration over the cereal consumed her and defiance and back talk made it’s way into the discussion about finishing her breakfast. When I finally inspected the cereal, I did notice large pieces of textures that she does not tolerate well and used it as a teachable moment to show her how to pull the pieces out of the cereal with her spoon and place them on a napkin.

But….it’s too late…next week when I make hot nut cereal I will have to run the blender twice and to take the extra time to reassure her and show her that it is, indeed, safe to eat.

Pick and Choose

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I’m all about saving money using meal planning, which is what prompted me to watch a Yahoo News Video entitled Feed Family for $15 a day, even though I had previously sworn of watching/reading these so-called-News-posts as a silly indulgence that were sucking up too much of my precious computer time.

Nevertheless, it was probably entertaining to watch my facial expressions as the tips for saving money on family meals unfolded. The following tips from the article caused a pleasingly surprised expression:

*Intentional Shopping–which means make a menu, make a list, stick to it. Bingo! Almost verbatim to my Recommendations and Advice.The food saving expert also states that planning ahead for shopping trips can save up to 20% on impulse or unplanned purchases. She also mentions when meal planning, consider leftovers and the nights you will not be home. Beautiful.

*Freezing in portions–I whole heartedly agree with this, especially for meat. This is also helpful dinner/meal planning and additionally for my mid day meals, which I stash a few emergency pieces of protein in a separate part of my freezer for days when there’s limited leftovers available for my lunch. Also, she mentions shopping from your freezer first before loading up at the store on meat. Yup.

*Using leftovers–the food saving expert recommends taking leftover veggies and using them in an omlete or egg scramble the next morning. I agree….except when she gets to the part about adding rice and tofu to vegetables to save money. My mouth and eyebrows are contorting in various angles as I’m wondering…where’s the beef?

At this point, anyone approaching my laptop should back away slowly because my expression displays a confused and disapproving scowl at the following advice for feeding one’s family….

*Going Vegetarian once or twice per week. Nope. This will only mess with your insulin levels and leave you hungry before bed or send you into kitchen for a late night binge on chips, crackers, ice cream or some other processed food to fill in what the healthy protein and fat should have done for you. Eat meat.

*Whole grain pasta as a cheap base for meals. Oh My. I have made it clear in previous posts how eating pasta ruined our health. The gluten and starch caused significant stress on our digestive systems, my adrenal glands, and Charlotte’s neurological development. No, thank you.

*Beans and legumes as super stars. Wow. She recommends cooking them to hydrate them. True, but  legumes contain lectins and cooking them makes them edible but still detrimental to our health. Feeding the Rotini with Legumes to my family of 4 would cause stomach upset, gas, and bloating. Misery.

My point to this post is to approach mainstream advice for feeding your family with apprehension and patience. Despite the rising numbers of individuals with diabetes and insulin resistance, celiac, and many other food based disease, this information is still being presented as the optimum way to feed our family and save money. Beware of Big Food companies that lessen the price and quality of processed food at the expense of making us sick.

Find the Yahoo video here. Or better yet, stick to healthy recipes and sound advice based on ancestral health that can be found on the sites listed in Paleo Community.