August 2012

Paleo Meatloaf: End of Summer Twist

by Jessica on August 30, 2012

in Food, Main Courses, Meat, Paleo, Recipes

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Can you believe it’s almost Labor Day!? We are so ready for fall. Cooler temperatures, warmer meals, tailgating, pumpkin and cider. I’ve been craving pumpkin beer for about a week, so I’m trying to clean out (read: drink) my summer ale collection before this weekend. I know that’s just silliness, but it makes sense to me. Just like white pants, it makes sense to guzzle the summer beers before Labor Day.

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Even though it’s the end of summer, we still have tons of produce — none of which unfortunately, is from our garden. Last week, my mom gifted us a huge double bag of multiple varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumber and squash. Our brave tomatoes soldiered through most of the summer, but finally succumbed to the heat a few weeks ago. It’s been a bummer first summer gardening. But thankfully we’ve been spoiled by the generosity of others and are eating like kings. Case in point, our latest Paleo meat loaf, made from garden tomatoes, pepper, kale and oregano, wrapped in bacon for extra yum factor.

Ingredients:

1 pound ground pork
2 pounds ground beef (we used 90/10)
1 cup carrots, chopped
1 cup green pepper, chopped
1 cup kale, chopped (greens)
1 medium onion, diced
1 large tomato, diced
2 eggs
1 cup almond flour
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
2 teaspoon fresh oregano
2 teaspoon fresh basil
1-2 tablespoons oil (coconut oil)
6 ounces thin-sliced bacon (an estimate, use as much as you’d like)

Directions:

  1. Heat oven to 350°. Lightly oil a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. Depending on the size of your loaf pans, you might need two pans.
  2. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients (except bacon) and mix until thoroughly combined. Set aside.
  3. Arrange bacon strips alongside one another in the bottom of the loaf pan. Press mixture into loaf pan, then arrange the remaining bacon strips over the top of the loaf.
  4. Bake until bacon is crispy and meat loaf is firm, about 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let stand for 10 minutes before slicing or moving to a serving platter.

Serves 6

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Super juicy and fresh and the bacon adds a nice salty, crunchy texture over the top. Meat loaf is hard to make attractive, but the colorful array of veggies definitely helped our loaf in the looks department.

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For this meal, I also tried out an easy recipe for a cold veggie salad that my mom found on Rachael Ray. It’s so easy! Sliced up veggies (tomatoes, onion and cucumber) tossed with a little olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice and salt and pepper. So fresh and tangy!

We are just a few days from our 1-year anniversary of being mostly Paleo. Can you believe it’s almost been a year!?

{ 2 comments }

Unplugged. Rewired. Upgraded.

by Jessica on August 27, 2012

in House, Technology, Weekend

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Where have the past five days gone? Sorry for disappearing (I feel like I say this every week) but between a business trip and our first major house project being in progress, we’ve been somewhat unplugged over here.

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We’ve slowly started having the electrical redone throughout the house. Going into the purchase of an old house, we knew we would have to do some, but the extent of how much totally took us by surprise. Our wiring needed lots of clean-up, redo and then some all-new to suit our techie lifestyle. It’s still in progress, but already the lack of cords and cleaner box has been a huge weight off our shoulders.

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Doing this project has also enabled us to expand some infrastructure for our business. We now have cat6 running through our loft, living room, media room and into the basement. Doing so allows us to finally build the server box of our dreams.

We’re building it in a little room in our basement we’re just now showing you for the first time. Sorry, but you really weren’t missing much. We lovingly call it the “boo box” (Hook reference). It’s a windowless room that houses one of our sump pumps and our reverse-osmosis water filter. We’ve also been using it for some backpacking and racing equipment storage. Exciting stuff.

Here are some pics of our build in progress:

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With the rack and cat6 wiring in place, we can now focus on building our network and server environment for our business. The server will handle many functions however the most important will be data backups and redundancy. It will also serve as a test web server, FTP server, cloud storage server, and our media center/streaming server for movies and shows to our TV. We will also be putting in a PoE (Power over Ethernet) switch into the rack allowing us to connect powered devices like surveillance cameras without needing to run a power cable. Battery backups will also be included so that in the event of a power failure we can bring our devices down gracefully and not risk data loss. Having our home wired will also allow our devices to run at 1 gigabit per second speeds ensuring plenty of bandwidth for the large amounts of data we handle. In our business even the fastest wireless just does not cut it.

You might be asking yourself, “what is this all for?” “Why do you need this?” Well, because the nature of our business involves a lot of irreplaceable and valuable data that if we ever lost, not only would we have a lot of pissed off clients, but we would never recover it all which is a really, really scary proposition. So we need a way to back it all up and ensure its safety. Having this server will give us a more professional solution to our data safety and redundancy. Exciting right?

Having this first project under our belts has given us a huge surge of motivation to keep the momentum going. We hope to tackle some smaller projects while we rebuild our savings, but with each step, no matter the size, this house feels a little more like ours.

{ 1 comment }

Recipe Taste Test: Glazed Pork Ribs with Shichimi Togarashi from Bon Appetit

by Jessica on August 21, 2012

in BBQ, Food, Meat, Paleo, Recipes

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In a perfect world, we would barbecue every day. Wait, scratch that — we would have a fire pit in the back yard. Something big, cavernous and most importantly HOT. And we would barbecue meat and vegetables every day. Maybe the occasional pizza. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Unfortunately, life is hectic and constantly busy and sometimes you have to find clever ways to satisfy your craving for barbecued ribs on a Wednesday night after a nearly week-long business trip. No, I’m not pregnant, just barbecue-deprived after nearly 3 months of triple-digit sunsets that made our deck unbearable before 11 PM. Where was I? Oh yes, RIBS.

I came across this recipe while perusing the Bon Appetit website a few days before my trip last week. It detailed a slightly different preparation method than the last rack of ribs we oven-baked, so I bookmarked it try. I liked the idea of infusing the meat with lemon and rosemary, and using the juices to make the glaze.

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So we picked up a rack of ribs and prepped them over our lunch break last Thursday. We sliced them in half, sprinkled them generously with salt and pepper, and then placed one of the rib slabs bone-side up on a rimmed baking sheet that I lined with parchment on the bottom and double-foil over the top. We then placed thin slices of lemon over the rib slab, and in the middle we added two sprigs of rosemary and plenty of minced garlic. We then laid the second rack of ribs bone-side down evenly over the top of the other rib slab.

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We then wrapped them in parchment and foil and placed them in an oven preheated to 350° for 1 1/2 hours. I removed them and let them sit for about 45 minutes before discarding the lemon and rosemary, placing them in a container, and into the fridge to wait for dinner. I carefully collected the juices from the pan into a glass measuring cup, covered it with plastic wrap and placed it in the fridge.

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When we were ready to eat, we set the oven to broil and went to work preparing the glaze. We brought the pork juice to a slow simmer with minced rosemary and garlic, along with lemon juice (2 tbsp.) and zest in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. We added a little Arrowroot powder whisked with about a 1 tbsp. of water to thicken and then seasoned with salt and pepper. We separated the ribs and placed them on the baking sheet and placed them in the oven, turning them occasionally and letting them brown (it took about 9-10 minutes). Once they were done, we brushed them with the glaze and lightly dusted them with Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese Seven Spice) and chopped scallions to finish them.

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These were delicious! Super juicy and the Seven Spice gives them a slight sweetness that I didn’t expect. With this method, so much of the prep can be done in advance and then finished in a mere 20 minutes before you’re ready to eat. Sure, they lack the good smoke of a BBQ rib, but this method produces a solid tasting rib and is definitely one we’re going to try again with some other flavors. And they’re Paleo!

Try a kitchen shortcut recently that delivered a delicious result? We’d love to hear it!

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Cleaning up our dust

August 19, 2012
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We were finally out in the yard this weekend for the first time in nearly 3 months. It’s the first weekend we were a) both home and b) it isn’t at least 100 degrees outside. Our yard is in a pretty sad state, which sucks because we had so many plans for it this summer. [...]

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A few observations from the newly working-from-home

August 16, 2012

Sorry for kind of disappearing this week. I was out-of-town for my first work retreat, staying in a beautiful lake house. Pinch me right? Once or twice a year, they rent a house and spend 4-5 days meeting, working through new ideas and spending time together. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was [...]

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Paleo Sweet and Sour Chicken

August 9, 2012
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After our Cashew Chicken treat this past weekend, we’ve been on a bit of an Asian kick. I love coming up with ways to Paleo-ify (is that a word?) our take-out favorites. So often they are overly breaded, fried and salt and sugar-laden, so it’s fun to come up with ways to achieve the flavor [...]

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A little PR and some Rx too

August 8, 2012

I had a friend take some video during our CrossFit strength session yesterday. I established a new PR for my front squat, 125 lbs! I took it easy yesterday, but I think I can add another 10 lbs and still maintain form so we’ll see later in the week after a bit of recovery. Afterward, [...]

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