Nutrition Challenge 2013 – Recipes


weekly food preparation

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As many people soon figure out, the secret to starting and staying Paleo is to either prepare your food before you want to eat it or get fast at preparing food or have the person who makes your food prepare or learn to prepare it fast. Here are some recipes from Lauren in the 6 PM class that are really good.

This last weekend, I took a little time to prepare a lot of food. Here is what I prepared (Clock-wise starting at the top):

2 lbs of ground beef: I got this at Whole Foods a few weeks ago on sale. I put some salt and pepper in it but it is mostly plain. I use about 3 oz in each of our breakfasts.

A metric s#*t ton of cubed sweet potatoes: I may have gone overboard on this but that’s the way to goes sometimes. I used a combination of Japanese sweet potatoes and regular sweet potatoes. These are uncooked.

Spaghetti squash: Cooked it for about 50 min at 400.

Smashed up sweet potatoes: I baked the sweet potatoes with the spaghetti squash then smashed them with some salt and pepper and light coconut milk. I use these for breakfast, usually about a cup or so. in the winter, maybe a little less in the summer.

About 3 lbs of Brisket (before cooking): Recipe here

Chateaubriand: I got this from Whole Foods. I marinated this in red wine, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and some orange juice. I could have put a little more orange juice and less wine, but it turned out OK. I marinated it for 24 hours and broiled it for about 15 min total on the middle rack. I sliced some and left some whole for later in the week.

A big a$$ crock pot of stew: This was a little bit of a mess. I browned a whole roast and put it in with some WF vegetable broth on low for 6 hours. It didn’t cook thoroughly, so I cut it up into cubes and added some carrots and potatoes and added some water. I should have cubed and browned it from the beginning and put it on high. I put some menudo spice in it, this is pretty strong so be careful. Susan likes hot liquid food when it gets cold, so this is my attempt. I froze some of the stew.

Not Shown:
We stir fried some broccoli and French carrots (I get these at the farmers market in the winter> They are bigger and bulkier than regular carrots. They are really sweet) and we paired that with the brisket.

I had some marinara from the week before. Super simple browned sausage or ground beef (I forget which) some spices and canned tomatoes.

Eggs: We have 3 per day.

Salad fixins: We have some lettuce, greens, cucumbers and avocados at work. We mix those with the London Broil/Chateaubriand and it makes a pretty tasty lunch.

I fried up some zucchini with the sweet potatoes on Monday so we had some extra ready for the rest of the week.

Sometimes we’ll cut up an apple or an orange and have that with breakfast or have a piece of fruit at the gym with lunch.

Context:

What is in the picture took me about 6 or 7 hours over a weekend. Yes, there is some commitment to eating well, but I think it is worth it. Most of this time I was watching Breaking Bad or listening to a book.

We eat a fair amount, but partially that is because the gym is pretty cold most of the time. In summer, and when we aren’t working out, we eat a little less.

We usually eat three meals a day but it usually isn’t a problem if we miss a meal.

Yes, we eat a lot of carbs especially in the winter. Keep in mind that a cup of boiled sweet potatoes is about 41 g of carbs. An apple is about 24 g carbs, the small ones at the gym are about half that. We should count what we eat at some point but I probably average between 100 and 150 g carbs a day.

We usually have about 3 or 4 times what Chris Kressor recommends in dark chocolate a day. He recommends a piece about as big as a silver dollar. What’s the point, that’s not even enough to taste. Again, note that a whole bar of the dark chocolate that we like is 36 g of carbs and 450 calories. We go through one of these bars about every other day.

I could probably have better cholesterol numbers but my whole family has high cholesterol. My grandmother had 17 kids, diabetes and high cholesterol and lived ’til she was 86. Some of my uncles drink what I drink in a weekend everyday starting at 8 am for decades. They lived to their 70s and 80s. I have good genes, but still high cholesterol is no joke and I am addressing it. However, I doubt it is from dietary cholesterol/fat.