PALEO PUDDING

WHOLE30 DAY 30.

And I can breathe again. 

May 14 was Day 30 of my first Whole30. I didn’t end on a spectacular note — just a few standard, tried-and-true meals. 

Smoked salmon scramble for lunch, bun-less bison burgers for dinner. Some roasted mini peppers, some brussels sprouts, some sweet potato fries. 

After midnight, however, it was another story. May 15 was my 29th birthday. I had cake. And I enjoyed the FUCK out of it.

I’ll post my feelings about Whole30 once I’ve had a chance to catch my breath and think about what was good, what sucked, and what I’ll be taking with me into the future.

Meanwhile, add these Whole30 recipes into your repertoire: 

Pineapple Steak / Crispy Chicken / Naked Potstickers
Red Snapper / Asian Sirloin & Slaw / Fried Bananas
Frittata / The best salad ever / Mustard-Glazed Pork Chops
Coconutty Scramble / Salisbury Steaks / Coconut Chicken Nuggets

Maybe someday, I’ll even post real recipes for these. But honestly, nothing you’re doing is saving lives. Take a chance forget the measuring spoons tonight. You could probably do what I did better.

WHOLE30 DAY 29.

IT’S ALMOST OVER!!!

One of the most important things I learned on Whole30 is that salad doesn’t actually need dressing, if you put a runny egg on top and let that shit ooze out all over your food. The only word I can use to accurately describe an oozy runny yolk dribbling all over your lunch is SEXY.I would sell out all my friends and loved ones for the perfect egg.

So, that said, for lunch, I browned some broccoli stalks in a skillet, crisped up some prosciutto, fried an egg, and tossed all that onto a bed of greens and ate it fast, breathing all heavy, standing up in the kitchen. 

—-

Last night’s steak put me on a little bit of an Asian kick. One of the most impressive things I know how to do is make pork potstickers from scratch. Yeah man, like the dough and everything. 

I don’t know, maybe that’s not impressive, but I’ve made a lot of impressive potstickers in my day.

And I wanted to make them again. 

NAKED POTSTICKERS.

Knowing that there wouldn’t be any wrapper to seal these babies up, I made a few changes to my normal filling recipe. I didn’t want too much junk in there, in case it kept the filling from sticking together.

Instead, I went with: 1 pound of ground pork, 1 egg, 3-4 chopped green onions, 1/2 a very small yellow onion (diced or grated), 1/4 of a very small head of green cabbage (shredded, then chopped), 3 cloves of garlic (diced or grated), a glob of pulverized garlic, 4 button mushrooms (diced very teensily), and a large, heavy splashing of coconut aminos. Season with salt and pepper, then mix everything up with your hands. Shape tiny little mounds with them — I tried to go with little square-ish shapes, like shu mai, but honestly, nobody cares how cute they are. Keep them smallish, which means that, if you mixed an entire pound of ground pork up, this will make, like, a billion potstickers. Just set aside some of the mixture for another time, once you get tired of rolling out little shapes. 

I took a stab in the dark and cooked them the same way I cook normal potstickers, and heated up a heavy skillet over high heat. I brushed the pan with a very light layer of oil, then gently laid the naked potstickers onto the pan (you’ll probably have to do several batches). If they had their noodle-pants on, they’d immediately stick (hence the name, potstickers) as they crisped up their bottoms. The naked version didn’t really stick the same way, but it looked promising so far. 

With the lid of the pan ready, pour in a few glugs of chicken stock (or water works fine, too), then slam the lid on before it splatters everywhere. With normal potstickers, the liquid unsticks the dumplings and putting the lid on gets the top of the wrapper and the middle of the filling to steam, cooking it the rest of the way. 

Once I lifted the lid, I looked at the naked potstickers dubiously. I’m pretty sure this is what steamed potsticker meat looks like inside its prettily folded wrapper, but uncovered, it’s pretty unappetizing-looking. I still wanted to retain that flat, golden-looking potsticker bottom, but after deciding I couldn’t just leave them looking all pale and steamed like that, I flipped them over and browned the tops a tiny bit, just so they looked less sad.

I guess, bottom line is that you can be a stubborn asshole and make them the way I did, if you’re as obsessed with the whole “crispy bottom / soft middle” potsticker thing as I am… or you can just make it easier and fry em up like meatballs. 

Whatever works.

I served these up with some of that leftover slaw from last night, and a side of roasted broccollini.

WHOLE30 DAY 28.

When I woke up this morning, I saw the boyfriend, fully awake and caffeinated, pulling some winter clothes out of the closet and packing them up for the summer. Thoroughly guilted into getting out of bed, I dragged my ass to my sloppy section of the closet and decided to do a little light spring cleaning, piling up some old stuff I didn’t need anymore into a bags to be donated or garbaged. 

A little light spring cleaning ended up being an entire morning’s worth of dumping clothes, folding, organizing, and regretting I ever got out of bed. As it turns out, I have way more shit shoved into that tiny closet than I ever thought possible. I have more clothes that I kept because “maybe I’d sleep in that” than I have normal, wearable-in-public clothes, and I don’t exercise anywhere near enough to justify my massive pile of shirts reserved for “working out.” 

After 3 hours of excising the junk, we were ready for some fucking fuel.

I chopped up some asparagus, parsley, broccoli, and green onions to make a giant spring omelette for each of us, topped with a little bit of smoked salmon. We also had some leftovers of last night’s potato tacos, so I added in a spoonful each, and a quarter of an avocado. 

—- 

Right when I thought the cleaning was done for the day, I looked around my house and realized how weird it looked to have 1 clean area, while everything else was a fucking enormous wreck. 

6 hours of heavy lifting, vacuuming, scrubbing, polishing, and throwing all kinds of shit away, Spring Cleaning is done. 

And I never want to do it again. So, since then, I’ve been crazily careful to put things back where they belong, to wipe up the coffee I inevitably spill on my desk, and to actually do the dishes after I’m done cooking. We’ll see how long this lasts. 

In the midst of all the cleaning, I found an old Cooking Light underneath a pile of phone books and Vons receipts. Flipping through a few of the pages, this killer flank steak recipe caught my eye. I looked down the list of ingredients — a shit ton of which are not Whole30 approved — and felt ambitious enough to try to make it anyway. 

You should follow my lead, because this was THE BEST. EVER.

ASIAN-GLAZED SIRLOIN & MANGO-CABBAGE SLAW

[Here’s the actual Cooking Light recipe. I didn’t measure anything out though, and replaced almost everything in here with something else. But this will probably help you if you’re less of a haphazard “let’s see what happens” type of cook.]

Cooking Light wanted me to get flank steak, but I went with some sirloin instead. I didn’t really know what I was doing in any way, at all. Someday, I’ll remake this and actually measure, so I can tell somebody how to recreate what I did, but here’s my sloppily-prepared, mistake-laden process: 

In a big ziploc bag, add about a tablespoon each of pulverized garlic and ginger. I diced the garlic and used this tube of ginger puree that I keep in my fridge, and eyeballed the measurements. Then add some amount of chopped cilantro. I just added it until it looked cilantro-y… just about a small handful of leaves, ripped from the bunch. 

Then, pour in several big shakes of coconut aminos. I probably used somewhere in the ballpark of 2-3 tablespoons, but it doesn’t really matter. Add some salt and pepper, and stir the mixture up. Taste it. I had an asian pear on hand that I was going to use to sweeten up the mix, since I was omitting what looks like kind of a decent amount of sugar, but after a quick taste, I decided that it wasn’t at all necessary. I actually added a very small splash of rice vinegar, as well… just to see what happens. 

Put the meat in the bag and mush everything around so that there’s some of the mixture on both sides of the meat. Let it marinate for a few minutes, while you put together this fucking weird and amazing slaw.

In a big bowl, add the juice of 2 limes, and a splash of water. Then, squeeze in half a packet of Justin’s Classic Almond Butter, and mix everything together. Look at it dubiously — almond butter doesn’t really do the same thing that creamy peanut butter does when you mix it into a sauce. Oh well. 

Add in some shredded green cabbage and thinly chopped romaine lettuce. I ended up using about a half of a really small head of cabbage, and 2 little baby romaine hearts. My mix was more cabbage-heavy than the measurements they listed in the recipe, but that’s how I like it. Dump it into the bowl with another handful of chopped cilantro, and toss it with your hands to make sure the weird sauce gets all over everything. Season with salt, pepper, and some crushed red pepper. Weird and good. 

Next up, heat up a heavy skillet to high heat and sear the steaks, pouring the rest of that marinade right over the top. My original goal was to give them a light sear on each side (they were pretty thin), then slice them all pretty and medium-rare on the plate. But after a sear and a rest, I sliced the first one up and it was WAY too rare. So, to remedy this — and this is important and probably a step you should most definitely not omit — I tossed the strips back into my dirty pan that had the carmelized bits of cooked aminos and ginger all over the bottom. Using some tongs, I just stir-fried them in there super quickly, because I was terrified of burning the garlic and otherwise ruining my pretty steak slices.

But I shouldn’t have been worried. You can watch as that carmel-y sauce starts coating the slices, getting them way deeper in color than before. Give them just a minute or two of this, then pull them out. 

Now, style your plate all pretty like the Cooking Light page, so you can pretend to be amazing. Top everything with chopped mango and some extra cilantro and eat it while applauding yourself for making what’s probably the best fucking thing you’ve eaten in 28 days.

WHOLE30 DAY 27.

Every day closer to the end of Whole30, the happier I get. This wasn’t exactly a bad experience, per se, but an uncomfortable one for sure. I’m ready to be done — not so I can go out on a cheeseburger and lasagna binge — but mostly so I can start feeling like I have a life outside of food again. 

A lot of people say that Whole30 changed their lives. I think it could have changed mine, if I’d done it a year ago — before I ever started reading and Googling the weird things I’d read on food labels, before I wanted to admit that what I ate probably had something to do with how I felt, and before I learned how to make real food out of real ingredients. It could have, maybe. But we’ll never know. 

On Day 27, I had the boyfriend mix up a new batch of mayo. Keeping a tub in the fridge at all times is one of the most convenient things you can do, despite the fact that making mayonnaise sounds like the most inconvenient thing ever. It’s really not. It just takes a few minutes, a little patience, a lot of greasy clean-up, and a ton of patting yourself on the back for doing something that people will constantly be impressed with.

I put the mayo to good use right away by mixing up a big batch of tuna salad, with some chopped sweet mini peppers, celery, and red onions. Keeping a tub of this in the fridge at all times is the 2nd most convenient thing you can do.

So, a typical work-day lunch for me: salad with a scoop of tuna. Underneath that tuna is a fat wedge of beefsteak tomato and a drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette. 

—- 

There’s a place in between Orange County and San Diego that my parents should thank. It was one of the only reasons I’d drive up to Orange County to say hello while going to college in San Diego. That, and free laundry services.

I’d make the trek up the 5, laundry basket in tow, and religiously pull off the Ave Magdalena exit and directly into the drive-thru of Pedro’s Tacos to order a Potato Taco.

I’ve been recreating them in my kitchen since college, using liberal quantities of frozen hash browns and Daisy sour cream. As I got older, I swapped out the hash brown oblongs for thinly sliced yukon golds, and added in some fajita-esque bell peppers and onions.

It’s been at least a year since I’d made my last batch of potato tacos, and on Whole30, Day 27, while watching some guy slinging tacos out of a truck in Austin, Texas on the Food Network, I wanted a potato taco more than anything else in the world (other than donuts).

So, I adapted.

SWEET POTATO + SAUSAGE LETTUCE WRAPS W/ CILANTRO-LIME WHITE SAUCE.

First thing’s first. Turn on your broiler — mine is inconveniently located in the lower panel of my oven, where I have to pretty much lay on the floor to access it. Hope yours is better or that you’re lucky enough to have a grill. 

Once it’s ready to go, place your red onion and jalapeno in a foil-lined baking dish, coat them with a little bit of oil, then get down on the floor and slide them into the broiler — get them pretty close to the flame, if you can. Or put them on your grill. Or, somewhere on TV, I once saw somebody do this using a gas burner on the stove. Next time, I’m opting for that method.

The peppers should start to blacken up pretty shortly, so keep an eye on them and flip them over once they do. Once they’re all crazily-roasted on both sides, pull them out and cover them right away. This helps get the skin all loose, so they slip right off the peppers. Pull the skin off, and slice them up, removing the seeds and stems and other junk you don’t want to eat. Set them aside for later. 

In a big skillet over medium-high heat, heat some olive oil while you get your potatoes ready.

Because I wasn’t sure how these would fit into a tiny romaine lettuce leaf, I cut up the sweet potato (skin still on) into teensy cubes. 

Toss the cubes into the pan in as close to a single layer as you can get them. Season with salt, pepper, and maybe some smoked paprika or some chili powder, and crisp them up a little. You don’t really have to fully cook them at this point, but give them some crispy edges and appetizing color. 

Dump the potatoes into a bowl, and crisp up some sausage. (I figured a potato-only taco was probably not the most balanced meal ever, despite the fact that sausage is probably not the best protein choice ever. If you’re all superhero-like and healthy all the time and shit, go ahead and use some cubed chicken breast or ground turkey instead.) Once they’re nicely charred and crispy on the outside, set them aside with the potatoes. 

Next up, sliced onions. Season these with a little bit of whatever you seasoned the potatoes with, along with some salt and pepper, and give them a good char. Once they’re browned up a little, add some sliced bell pepper and jalapeno, then toss the potato + meat mixture right on top.

Give it all a good stir, then add in about a 1/4-cup of water. The water helps get the potatoes where they need to be, plus its the glue that holds the whole mixture together. Keep the pan on medium heat until the water’s almost all gone.

Meanwhile, pull out that handy tub of mayo you smartly made earlier today, and add 2-3 spoonfuls into a bowl. Add the juice of half a lime (or a whole one if your spoonfuls were big and your lime is small) and some of the zest. Also toss in some chopped cilantro, just to give it a cool-looking texture, and mix the mayo all up. If you want a looser, more taco-stand-esque white sauce, add in some water until the consistency feels right to you. This is the closest to sour cream I’ve come in my kitchen in the last several weeks.

Once the water’s all cooked out your potato-meat-veggie mixture, spoon this shit into a piece of lettuce, top with your choice of some avocado, chopped tomato, maybe a little more of that sliced roasted jalapeno, some fresh cilantro, chopped green onions, and a dollop of your lime sauce. 

POTATO TACO NIRVANA. 

But I still miss Pedro’s.